Fruit and Vegetables
Learn 20 easy A1 English words for fruit and vegetables - apple, grapes, watermelon, onion, cucumber - with examples, a story and a quiz.
You cannot buy lunch, order a salad or describe your breakfast without these words. Here are the ten fruits and ten vegetables that appear most often in beginner English courses – plus the two words for the groups themselves. Learn them, then come to the Saturday market with my mother, who does not trust supermarkets.
20 words to learn
The 20 words
/fruːt/
Sweet food that grows on trees and plants. Usually uncountable: a lot of fruit.
I eat a lot of fruit in summer.
/ˈvedʒtəblz/
Plants you cook or put in a salad. Say VEJ-tuh-bulz – three parts, not four.
Children must eat their vegetables.
/ˈæpl/
A round hard fruit, red, green or yellow.
An apple a day is a famous English saying.
/bəˈnɑːnə/
A long yellow fruit. You take the skin off.
I have a banana before the gym.
/ˈɒrɪndʒ/
A round orange fruit, full of juice. It is also a colour.
This orange is very sweet.
/ɡreɪps/
Small green or purple fruit that grow together in a bunch.
We bought a kilo of black grapes.
/ˈlemən/
A yellow fruit with a very sour taste.
Put some lemon on the fish.
/ˈstrɔːbrəli/
A small soft red fruit. Plural: strawberries.
The first strawberry of the year is the best one.
/ˈwɔːtəmelən/
A very big green fruit, red and full of water inside.
We eat watermelon every evening in July.
/deɪts/
Small sweet brown fruit from the palm tree.
My grandmother always has dates with her coffee.
/ˈmæŋɡəʊ/
A soft orange-yellow fruit with a big seed inside. Plural: mangoes.
A good mango is expensive here.
/pəˈteɪtəʊ/
A brown vegetable that grows under the ground. Plural: potatoes.
We had chicken and potato for dinner.
/təˈmɑːtəʊ/
A soft round red vegetable. Plural: tomatoes.
Cut the tomato for the salad.
/ˈʌnjən/
A round white or red vegetable with a strong taste. It makes you cry.
Fry the onion first, then add the meat.
/ˈkærət/
A long orange vegetable that grows under the ground.
Rabbits are not the only ones who like carrots.
/ˈkjuːkʌmbə(r)/
A long green vegetable that you eat cold, usually in a salad.
I put cucumber and tomato in every salad.
/ˈpepə(r)/
A green, red or yellow vegetable. Some kinds are hot.
Add half a green pepper.
/ˈɡɑːlɪk/
A small white vegetable with a very strong taste and smell.
This soup needs more garlic.
/ˈletɪs/
The big green leaves in a salad. Say LET-iss.
Wash the lettuce before you cut it.
/biːnz/
Small seeds you cook and eat, green or white.
Green beans with lemon and oil are delicious.
Now read the story
Story · all 20 words
Saturday at the Market
My mother does not trust supermarkets. Every Saturday morning we take two big bags and walk to the market at the end of our street, and at the gate she says the same sentence she has said for twenty years: “Fruit first, then vegetables.”
The first man sells only sweet things. There are apples in three colours, bananas that are still a little green, and a small mountain of oranges. My mother buys a bunch of black grapes and two lemons for the fish. In April she waits for the first strawberry of the year, and she eats it in the street before we get home.
In summer there is one thing everybody carries home from this market: a watermelon, big and heavy and green, and it is always my brother who has to carry it. Next to it there are boxes of dates from the south, and one small box of mangoes that costs more than everything else in our bags together.
Then the vegetable side. My mother buys potatoes and onions by the kilo because they last a long time. She takes six red tomatoes, three cucumbers, one green pepper, a head of garlic, a bag of carrots for the soup and a big white lettuce for the salad. At the end she asks for green beans, and the man puts a few extra ones in the bag because she comes every single week.
We walk home slowly. The bags are heavy and one of them always breaks near our door. But on Saturday evening the fridge is full, the whole kitchen smells green, and my mother is completely happy for about two days.
Two plurals to remember: most words just add -s, but words ending in -o here add -es:
potato → potatoes tomato → tomatoes mango → mangoes
And -y becomes -ies: strawberry → strawberries.
Pronunciation traps:
- vegetables has three parts, not four: VEJ-tuh-bulz.
- lettuce is LET-iss, not let-TOOS.
Countable or not? Fruit is normally uncountable: I eat a lot of fruit (not fruits). But vegetables is normally plural: eat your vegetables. At the market, use quantities: a kilo of tomatoes, half a kilo of beans, a bunch of grapes, a head of garlic.
Fruit: apple, banana, orange, grapes, lemon, strawberry, watermelon, dates, mango.
Vegetables: potato, tomato, onion, carrot, cucumber, pepper, garlic, lettuce, beans.
Open your fridge tonight and name everything inside it in English. Anything you cannot name, write on a small paper and put it on the fridge door.
Now practise with the questions below.
Check your understanding
Answer the questions below. You will see instantly if you are right.
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