Vietnamese Grammar Review - How to Say “Let’s”

Lesson Transcript

Hey there, it's Linh again.

Welcome back to vietnamespod101.com, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Vietnamese.

It's gonna to be an interesting video because usually we will pick a topic in Vietnamese

or a grammar point or some kind of vocabulary to introduce to you guys.

But today, I'm going to make it a little bit different.

I'm going to pick a target language in English,

and I'm going to introduce to you guys how to use it in Vietnamese.

The one that I chose today is how to use “let's” and “let” in Vietnamese.

And let's see how different they are, OK?

The first situation when you use “let” without an S,

that means you want to ask someone to let you do something, right?

We have several ways to use that in Vietnamese.

For example, you want to pay for a meal, a drink, or just simply pay for something.

In Vietnamese, we say

Để tôi trả tiền.

Ok?

That means “let me pay for it.”

For example, if you want to say that “let me pay for the dinner today”,

you can say

Để tôi trả tiền bữa tối cho.

Next one, if you are having some work and you want to ask the other person to let you finish the work,

in this situation, you can say

Để tôi làm cho.

“Let me do it for you.”

“Let me do it for you” means “let me do it” or ”let me finish it”, OK?

Another example would be, for example, if you want to say let me buy it or let me buy for you,

in this situation, we can say

Để tôi mua cho.

Ok?

So that means “let me buy it”

So after three examples, I believe that you already know that we have a structure Để tôi,

and then you put the verb after that.

For example,

Để tôi + trả tiền

Để tôi + mua

Để tôi + làm

etc

So easy, right?

Để tôi means “let me”.

Situation number two, where you use “let's” with an S, so of course, it's gonna be different in meaning,

and I'll show you some examples so you can see clearly.

For example, if you want to say let's go, that means

Đi thôi

Something like that.

So here, actually, we will swap the positions of the word a little bit.

“Let's” here, you actually put the word thôi at the end of the sentence to say that, “hey, let's do something:

So, đi means “go”, thôi means something like “let's” and verb, OK?

I'll give you another example.

Let's say, let's say,I don't know how to translate, it's not gonna be very natural.

For example, if you want to say “let's sleep”, in this situation, we'll say

Đi ngủ thôi.

Đi means go,

ngủ means “to sleep”,

and thôi means like “let's”.

Đi ngủ thôi.

The funny thing is you will see that sometimes we put đi with a lot of verbs.

For example,

Đi du lịch means “to travel” or “go traveling”,

Đi ăn means “go eating”,

Đi chơi means just “to hang out”.

So for some activities that you have to go to do it, then we will put the words đi

in front of the verb.

Another example would be, “let's try to finish the job.”

In this situation, we will not translate word by word because it's not natural.

If you want to make it really natural, in Vietnamese, we say

Cố hoàn thành công việc đi.

So you will see that we have đi at the end of the sentence.

That also means let's, but it will be a little bit different in meaning.

The feeling will be a little bit different.

We can understand like, “let's try to finish the job”,

or “please try to finish the job”, something like that.

I'll give you another example so you would understand clearly.

For example, “let's cook.

I would say

Nấu cơm đi.

So I also use the word đi at the end of the sentence.

It means “let's cook”, or it also means “please cook”,

or you want to ask someone to join cooking with you.

So Nấu cơm đi.

To summarize, there are two ways to use the word “let's”.

The first one would be you put thôi at the end of the sentence.

And the second one, you put the word đi at the end of the sentence.

The meanings are similar.

Sometimes you can use thôi, sometimes you can use đi

Okay, so that's it for today.

Thank you so much for watching this video.

I hope it's not confusing.

And don't forget to like this video,

subscribe the channel,

and visit the website

vietnamespot101.com to learn more Vietnamese.

Thank you so much again and see you in the next one.

Xin chào và hẹn gặp lại.

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