奶奶的字
Grandma's shopping list: a trip to the Chinese supermarket
Name: ________________ Date: ________
星期天早上，奶奶给了我一张纸和一百块钱。“去超市帮我买点儿东西，我都写在纸上了。”
我看了看那张纸。奶奶的字很大，可是我看不太懂。
第一个是“牛奶”，第二个是“鸡蛋”，这两个我认识。第三个只有一个字，写得像一条小鱼。是“鱼”吗？
最后一个，我一个字也看不懂。
到了超市，我买了牛奶、鸡蛋，还买了一条鱼。然后，我拿着纸问超市里的一个阿姨：“您能看懂这个吗？”
阿姨看了很久，说：“这是‘西瓜’吧？”
旁边一位老爷爷也看了看，说：“不对，这是‘面条’。”
最后，西瓜和面条我都买了。
回到家，奶奶看着桌子上的东西，笑了半天。
“鱼？我没写鱼啊！这是‘米’！”
“那最后一个呢？是西瓜还是面条？”
奶奶拿起那张纸，看了很久很久，说：“这个……我也看不懂了。”
那天晚上，我们吃了鱼，吃了面条，还吃了西瓜。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 奶奶 | nǎinai | grandmother (father's mother); grandma |
| 帮 | bāng | to help; to assist |
| 懂 | dǒng | to understand; to know |
| 条 | tiáo | strip; slip (as in 纸条) |
| 鱼 | yú | fish |
| 拿 | ná | to take; to hold; to carry |
| 旁边 | pángbiān | beside; next to; nearby |
| 位 | wèi | place; position; seat |
| 笑 | xiào | to laugh; to smile |
| 张 | zhāng | surname Zhang |
| 纸 | zhǐ | paper |
| 只有 | zhíyǒu | only; only if; unless |
English (for the teacher)
On Sunday morning Grandma gave me a sheet of paper and a hundred yuan. “Go to the supermarket and get me a few things. I've written it all down.”
I looked at the paper. Grandma's writing was big, but I could hardly read it.
The first one was “milk” and the second was “eggs”; those two I could read. The third was just one character, written like a little fish. Was it “fish”?
The last one I couldn't read a single character of.
At the supermarket I bought milk and eggs, and a fish too. Then I took the list to a woman who worked there. “Can you read this?”
She looked at it for ages and said, “That's ‘watermelon’, isn't it?”
An old man next to us had a look too. “No, that's ‘noodles’.”
In the end I bought both the watermelon and the noodles.
Back home, Grandma looked at everything on the table and laughed for ages.
“Fish? I never wrote fish! That says ‘rice’!”
“Then what's the last one? Watermelon or noodles?”
Grandma took the paper, looked at it for a long, long time, and said, “This one… I can't read it either.”
That night we had fish, noodles, and watermelon.