시장에서 숫자 듣기: 세 개인가, 네 개인가
Jiwoo is practising the 듣기 section with a 40-second market exchange she reconstructed after hearing it twice. The vendor says: 「이거 하나에 천오백 원이에요. 두 개 사면 삼천 원이고, 세 개 사면 사천 원이에요.」 The customer answers: 「그럼 네 명이 먹을 걸로 주세요.」 Jiwoo's notes read 하나 1,500 / 둘 3,000 / 셋 4,000 / 넷 5,000 - she assumed the discount continues in a straight line and wrote the fourth price herself. The printed choices are ① 한 개 ② 두 개 ③ 세 개 ④ 네 개, and the question asks how many the customer can actually buy with a 5,000-won bill. On the second listening she also notices that 천오백 원 no longer sounds like 천-오-백, and 사천 원 no longer sounds like 사-천-원, which makes her doubt her own numbers. She has 30 seconds left and is about to change her answer to ④ because the customer asked for four.
1. Which choice is correct, and exactly where does Jiwoo's linear-discount assumption break? Show the arithmetic rather than the conclusion.
Read the worked answer
Correct choice: ③ 세 개.
Rebuild the price table only from what was said, not from what feels consistent:
| 수량 | 가격 | 단가 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,500원 | 1,500원 |
| 2 | 3,000원 | 1,500원 |
| 3 | 4,000원 | 약 1,333원 |
Only the 3-item line is discounted. Four items therefore cost either 3+1 (4,000 + 1,500 = 5,500원) or 2+2 (6,000원). Both exceed 5,000원, and 5,000 − 4,000 = 1,000원 is short of the 1,500원 needed for a fourth item.
The break is at the step Jiwoo invented: 4,000 + 1,000 = 5,000 assumes the per-item discount keeps growing, but the vendor never offered a 4-item price. Note also the trap in the stem itself - the customer requests four for four people; the question asks what the money permits. Request and feasibility are different objects, and 듣기 items routinely separate them.
2. Jiwoo's numbers now sound wrong to her. Explain what is actually happening to 천오백 원 and 사천 원, and describe the note-taking habit that would have made the second listening useful instead of destabilising.
Read the worked answer
Nothing is being swallowed. This is 연음 (linking): the final consonant of 천 carries onto the following vowel, so 천오백 sounds like [처노백], and the ㄴ of 천 in 사천 원 links and nasalises toward [사처눈]. The digits have not changed; the syllable boundaries have. A learner who stored the sound has nothing stable to check, while a learner who stored digits + unit can re-hear the same stream and confirm it.
The habit: during the first listening write 1 → 1500, 2 → 3000, 3 → 4000 - digits, not Hangul, and never a quantity whose price was not spoken. Use the second listening for structure, not numbers: confirm the unit (원), and confirm the conditional ending -(으)면, which is precisely what carries the discount logic. The invented 넷 5,000 should have been flagged with a question mark rather than written as data. If a note cannot be sourced to a spoken clause, treat it as a hypothesis, and do not let a hypothesis outvote an explicit number.