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Vietnamese phrases, by meaning
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Common questions about Vietnamese
What does this Vietnamese page cover?
Twenty-two functional categories with Vietnamese examples: tense and aspect markers (đã, đang, sẽ, vừa, mới, chưa, rồi, xong), modality (có thể for can, phải for must, muốn for want), negation (không, chưa, đừng), questions (ai, gì, ở đâu, khi nào, tại sao, the polar particle không), comparison with hơn, classifiers (cái, con, chiếc, bộ), and 14 others. All glossed.
How do Vietnamese pronouns work without grammatical person?
By tracking the social relationship between speaker and listener using kinship terms. Talking to someone slightly older male: anh covers 'you' from below and 'I' from above. Talking to someone younger: em. Aunt-aged woman: cô. Uncle-aged man: bác. The same word can mean 'you' or 'I' depending on which side of the relation you're on. Picking the wrong term reads as rude, intimate, or distant — context-dependent.
How does Vietnamese mark time without verb tenses?
Through pre-verbal particles plus context. Ăn means 'eat' / 'ate' / 'will eat' depending on what's around it. Add đã and you get the perfective (đã ăn 'ate'), đang for the progressive (đang ăn 'is eating'), sẽ for future (sẽ ăn 'will eat'). The verb itself never inflects. Time-of-day words (hôm qua, hôm nay, ngày mai) carry most of the temporal load.
Why does Vietnamese have so many classifiers?
Because every counted noun pairs with one. Cái for inanimate things, con for animals and certain objects (con sông 'river', con dao 'knife'), chiếc for individual things from a set, bộ for sets, ngôi for buildings. Một quyển sách 'one volume-of book', một chiếc xe 'one CL car'. The right classifier carries semantic information about the kind of thing being counted; using the generic cái everywhere works but sounds unnatural.
Is this Northern (Hanoi) or Southern (Saigon) Vietnamese?
The structures cover both. Vietnamese has three major regional varieties — Northern, Central, Southern — that share grammar but diverge in pronunciation (notably tone realizations) and some vocabulary. Examples lean toward the Hanoi-based standard used in education and broadcasting nationwide, with notes where Southern usage diverges meaningfully (e.g., dạ versus vâng for affirmation).
Sources for Vietnamese
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Thompson, Laurence C. (1965). "A Vietnamese Grammar." University of Washington Press. — No inflection, isolating typology: §3.1, pp. 50–53. — SVO and adjective-after-noun order: pp. 197–199, 233–235. — Pronoun/kinship system: §6.16–6.30, pp. 246–256. — Classifiers (loại-từ): §8.41, pp. 192–197. — Aspect/time particles đã, đang, sẽ, chưa: §11.1–11.5, pp. 209–215. — Post-verbal completive/resultative xong, hết, ra, được: §9.54–9.66, pp. 215–225. — Negation với không and chưa: §11.4, pp. 213–215. — Question particle không and in-situ wh-words: §10.2, pp. 239–250. — Possessive của (optional): §6.21, pp. 250–251. — Modals có thể, muốn, phải, nên: pp. 217–220. — Serial verb constructions: §10.4, pp. 250–254. — Topic-comment / focal complex order MANNER→TIME→PLACE→TOPIC→PREDICATE: Ch. 10, pp. 239–255. — Relative clauses with mà: pp. 254–256. — Six Northern tones (ngang, huyền, hỏi, sắc, ngã, nặng): §3.42, pp. 19–22. — Reduplication (từ láy): Ch. 7 in full, pp. 139–178 — total reduplication for attenuation (đẹp đẹp, nhỏ nhỏ, trắng trắng) p. 152; tonal-prefix attenuative pattern (kha khá, nho nhỏ) §7.61 p. 172; alliterative emphatic suffixes (sạch sẽ, sạch nhách, sạch sành sanh) §7.55–7.56 pp. 159–168; ironic -iếc suffix (sách siếc) §7.62 p. 173.
- Nguyễn, Đình-Hòa (1997). "Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn." John Benjamins. — Kinship pronoun system: pp. 123–131. — Classifier loại-từ syntax: p. 95. — Negation chưa: p. 108. — Existential/possessive có (six functions): pp. 113–114. — Comparison constructions: pp. 122–123. — Final pragmatic particles: pp. 165–168. — Topic-comment, fronting, focus: pp. 209–228. — Negation system: pp. 233–235. — Reduplication (§3.7, pp. 44–57) — total reduplication for distribution (nhà nhà, ngày ngày) p. 45; tone-register harmony rule p. 46; back/front vowel alternation in alliteratives p. 47; /l-/ dominance in rhyming forms p. 49; emphatic alliterative suffixes (nhỏ nhắn, nhỏ nhặt, nhỏ nhẹ, nhỏ nhen) p. 51; ironic -iếc suffix (sách siếc, áo iếc, học hiếc) §3.7.6, p. 53.
- Ngo, Binh Nhu (2020). "Vietnamese: An Essential Grammar." Routledge. — Pre-verbal aspect markers and ordering: §4.3. — bị/được as evaluative predicates: §2.12. — Question formation (yes/no with không, hả, à and wh-in-situ): §6.2. — Reduplication (§4.2.3, pp. 130–137) — total reduplication for attenuation (đẹp đẹp, nhỏ nhỏ, trắng trắng) p. 130; tone-changed attenuative copies (âm ấm, kha khá, nho nhỏ) p. 131; coda-changed attenuatives with stop↔nasal alternation (đềm đẹp, tôn tốt, chằng chắc) p. 131; productive ironic -iếc suffix §4.2.3.6, p. 135; semantically opaque pseudo-redups (bâng khuâng, dửng dưng, mênh mông) p. 135.
- Phan, Trang (2024). "The Syntax of Vietnamese Tense, Aspect, and Negation." Routledge. — TAM hierarchy and pre-verbal marker ordering: Ch. 2. — Post-verbal markers as completive/resultative: Ch. 4, pp. 91–95. — Tense vs. adverb distinction (sẽ/đã/đang are heads; từng/vừa/sắp are adverbs): Ch. 5, p. 155.
- Hole, Daniel & Löbel, Elisabeth (eds.) (2013). "Linguistics of Vietnamese: An International Survey." De Gruyter Mouton (TiLSM 253). — Article system (một, những, các): Ch. 3 (Nguyễn Hùng Tưởng). — Focus particles chỉ, thậm chí, cả: Ch. 10 (Hole). — Passive reanalysis (bị/được as evaluative): Ch. 6 (Simpson & Hồ).
- Tran, Tri C. (2024). "Essential Vietnamese Grammar." Tuttle. — Adjective + meaningless intensifier syllable (nặng trịch, nhẹ hều, đắng nghét, ốm nhách): §7.3, p. 118.