Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Hello and welcome to Southern Vietnamese Survival Phrases brought to you by VietnamesePod101.com. This course is designed to equip you with the language skills and knowledge to enable you to get the most out of your visit to Southern Vietnam. You’ll be surprised at how far a little Vietnamese will go.
Now, before we jump in, remember to stop by VietnamesePod101.com. There, you’ll find the accompanying PDF lesson notes and additional info in the post. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment.

Lesson focus

Southern Vietnamese Survival Phrases lesson 38 - Using the Post Office in Southern Vietnam.
In today’s lesson, we’re going to take a trip to the post office. Now, the “post office” in Vietnam is bưu điện, bưu điện, and today, we’re gonna work on getting your postcards, letters, and packages home. The expression to accomplish this is "I'd like to send this to…" and then the desired country. For today’s lesson, we'll use New York.
In Vietnamese, to say "I'd like to send this to New York." is Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
Let’s break it down by syllable: Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
Let’s hear it again, Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
The first word, tôi, should be familiar and it means "I."
The next word, muốn, means "want" or "want to."
So far, we have tôi muốn, tôi muốn, which is "I want to."
Tôi muốn is followed by gửi.
gửi
Gửi is to “send”
gửi
gửi
Let's take a look at the next words. This is followed by cái này which means "this" or "this thing."
cái này
cái này
The next word is đi, which means "to go" or in this case "to somewhere,” or “bound for somewhere."
đi
đi
This followed by our destination, New York.
So all together, we have - Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
Tôi muốn gửi cái này đi New York.
Literally, this means "I'd like to send this to New York."
Now, we can build this up a bit by adding in the words for what we’d like to send. For example, we mentioned postcards, letters, and packages, so let’s start there. The word for postcard in Vietnamese is bưu thiếp.
bưu thiếp
bưu thiếp
So the expression would now sound like this - Tôi muốn gửi bưu thiếp đi New York.
Tôi muốn gửi bưu thiếp đi New York.
Let’s break this down by syllable: Tôi muốn gửi bưu thiếp đi New York.
Tôi muốn gửi bưu thiếp đi New York.
Now, let’s hear it once again, Tôi muốn gửi bưu thiếp đi New York.
Notice the position of bưu thiếp.
Let’s try sending a letter. The word for letter in Vietnamese is thư.
thư
Once again, thư.
So, to send a letter, we would say Tôi muốn gởi thơ đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi thơ đi New York.
In Vietnam, when you want to send a package, the post office would check what you have inside. So remember not to wrap it up so tight that you can’t show them what you have, because they will tell you to tear the whole beautifully wrapped package apart. If you want to send some antiques, make sure to get the approval from the Culture Ministry.

Outro

Okay, to close out today’s lesson, we'd like for you to practice what you've just learned. I'll provide you with the English equivalent of the phrase and you're responsible for shouting it out loud. You’ll have a few seconds before I give you the answer, so chúc may mắn, this means “good luck” in Vietnamese.
Okay, here we go!
“I'd like to send this to New York.” - Tôi muốn gởi cái này đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi cái này đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi cái này đi New York.
“I'd like to send this postcard to New York.” - Tôi muốn gởi bưu thiệp đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi bưu thiệp đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi bưu thiệp đi New York.
“I'd like to send this letter to New York.” - Tôi muốn gởi thơ đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi thơ đi New York.
Tôi muốn gởi thơ đi New York.
All right, that's going to do it for this lesson. Remember to stop by VietnamesePod101.com and pick up the accompanying PDF lesson notes. If you stop by, be sure to leave us a comment. Bye!

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