Learning Vietnamese - Lesson 6

Today’s lesson was focused on building sentences, and how to arrange the words. This differs a bit from English and Swedish. For example, in Vietnamese the adjective comes after the noun — so instead of saying "big house" like in English or "stort hus" in Swedish, you say "nhà lớn." It takes some getting used to, but it’s starting to make sense. We also practiced forming simple subject-verb-object sentences, which are similar to English in structure, but without verb conjugation or articles.

We continued practicing how to introduce things:

• Đây là — this is
• Đó là — that is
• Kia là — that over there is

I’m getting more comfortable identifying what’s near me (đây) versus what’s closer to the listener (đó) or farther away (kia).

Example:

• Còn anh ấy là người... — And he is a person... (probably continued with a nationality or occupation).

Punctuation matters, the most common are:

• . = chấm
• , = phẩy
• ? = dấu hỏi

Talking About Happiness

We dug into emotions:

• Vui = short-term or light happiness (think: cheerful, glad)
• Hạnh phúc = deeper, long-lasting happiness (think: contentment or joy)

So I might say:

• Tôi rất vui — I’m very happy (right now).
• Or aim for: Tôi cảm thấy hạnh phúc — I feel truly happy.

It’s interesting how this difference is built into the language — makes you think about the kind of happiness you’re really feeling.

Here’s a useful sentence:

• Chủ của tôi thích món (or thức) ăn Việt Nam

Món ăn and thức ăn are both used to talk about food, but món is a bit more specific, like "dish" as in "a dish on the menu."