Learn how to use Vietnamese adjectives
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| Xin chào, tôi là Giang. Hi everybody! I’m Giang. |
| Welcome to VietnamesePod101.com’s “3 phút học tiếng Việt”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Vietnamese. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb là - “to be” and có, “to have," in the negative form. |
| In this lesson, we will learn about Vietnamese adjectives and how to use them properly. We’ll look at two basic rules. |
| Here's the first rule: the adjective is added right after the subject it describes. You don't need to put anything in between them. |
| For example - |
| Tôi mệt - literally “I tired”, this is how we say “I’m tired”. |
| Quyển sách này hay, literally “book this good”, this is how we say “this book is good”. |
| Cô ấy xinh, literally “She beautiful”, and this means “she is beautiful” |
| So first, say the subject of the sentence, then follow it with the adjective. The same applies to all kinds of subjects, singular or plural, an object, or a person. Much easier than English, right? |
| Now, the second rule is how to combine a noun and an adjective in a noun phrase. This is the opposite of English - the adjective comes after the noun. |
| The structure is: |
| Một + singular noun + adjective |
| Những + plural noun + adjective |
| Let’s look at some examples- |
| Cô ấy là một bác sĩ giỏi - “She is a good doctor.” |
| Cô ấy means “she" |
| là is the verb “to be” |
| một means “one” or “a” in this case |
| bác sĩ means “doctor” |
| and “giỏi” means “good” |
| The whole sentence again, is Cô ấy là một bác sĩ giỏi. |
| Here’s another example with a plural noun - |
| Đây là những bài toán khó- “These are difficult math exercises.” |
| Đây means “this” or “here” |
| là is the verb “to be” |
| những is an article indicating more than one, |
| bài toán means “math exercise” |
| and khó means “difficult”. |
| Again, the whole sentence - |
| Đây là những bài toán khó. |
| Here are a few more examples of noun phrases. |
| Những ngôi chùa cổ kính - “Ancient pagodas.” |
| Một nhà hàng nổi tiếng - “A famous restaurant.” |
| Những chú chó đáng yêu - “Cute dogs.” |
| Một thương nhân thành đạt - “A successful businessman.” |
| Một sinh viên chăm chỉ - “A hard-working student.” |
| Are you getting more confident about using adjectives in Vietnamese now? |
| Now it’s time for Giang’s Insights. |
| If you want to emphasize an adjective in Vietnamese, you can add some adverbs. Take the adjective đẹp, which means “beautiful”. We can emphasize it by saying rất đẹp meaning “very beautiful”, or đẹp lắm meaning “very much beautiful” or đẹp thật meaning “really beautiful”. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to properly use adjectives in Vietnamese. |
| In the next lesson, we’ll learn the basic uses of the verb đi, which is "To go". |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next 3 phút học tiếng Việt lesson. |
| Tạm biệt! |
7 Comments
HideCan you make a sentence using an adjective?
Hi Mike,
That sentence is perfectly correct- gramma wise! I'll leave the rest for my teammate Giang to respond to :)
Cheers,
Khanh.
Team VietnamesePod101.com
Giang là một phụ nữ rất đẹp :-)
Hi James,
Thank you for your comment.
In "những chú chó đáng yêu":
- "chú" is classifier for animals when you want to personify it. So it sounds more lovely or friendly. You can use this word with cat, fish, bird or even dinosaur. For example: "chú mèo", "chú cá", "chú chim", "chú khủng long".
- In many other cases, "đáng + Verb" literally means: "worth-doing sth" or "~worthy". For example: "trust" is "tin" ==> "trust-worthy" is "đáng tin". However, in this case, "đáng yêu" is a set of word means "lovely", "cute". So it's better if you remember it as an adjective and don't break it down.
*** Note: the helping verb you were talking about is written as "đang" - not "đáng" (different tone mark). So they are not the same word.
Cheers,
Huyen
Team VietnamesePod101.com
Hi Giang,
I love your lessons
In "Những chú chó đáng yêu"
(1) what is the meaning/function of chú, and
(2) meaning/function of đáng?
The only dang we leaned so far is the helping verb when asking "where are you?, Ban dang o dau?"
I can't find exact meanings of chú and đáng even in the dictionary included in the web site.
Thanks, James
Hi Ken,
Thank you for your question.
What you were told was right.
"là" is only used before a noun/noun phrase. Specifically, when you talk about nationality, occupation or definition of something. It is not used with adjectives.
Cheers,
Giang
Team VietnamesePod101.com
Thank you, A very good lesson, well explained.
However, I am just a little confused on when to use 'là = to be'.
I see sometimes that 'là' is needed and sometimes 'la' is just thrown out.
Someone told me that 'là' is used with nouns like "Tôi là người Mỹ" (I am an American.) and not with adjectives as in "Tôi đẹp." (I am handsome.) or "Tôi mệt" (I am tired.).
Is this true?