Telling the time in Vietnamese

Lesson Transcript

Chào các bạn! Tôi là Linh. Tôi đã quay trở lại đây.

Hi everyone! My name is Linh and I'm back.

We have videos about days, countries, colors, pick up lines, how to say hello.

And today I'd like to talk about time, how to tell time, okay?

Because if you want to make an appointment or a plan with anyone, you have to tell when you want to see that person, right?

Okay, so let's talk about time.

So first is the time to learn vocabulary.

So, number one.

Giờ

Giờ is “hour"

So, here you will see the gi sound, you will pronounce like “z" sound in English.

Giờ

Okay? And the tone is dấu huyền.

Next one phút.

Phút

So ph sound you pronounce like “f" sound in English.

And it sounds similar with “food”, right?

But with dấu sắc, you have to go up a little bit and the tongue has to be very strong.

Phút

for “minute"

Giây

So giây here means second.

Giây

First, what time is it?

So in Vietnamese, you can easily say Bây giờ là mấy giờ?

Bây giờ là mấy giờ?

Bây giờ là mấy giờ? means “Now is what time?”

But also you can say in a faster way:

Mấy giờ rồi?

Rồi, Mấy giờ rồi means “What time?”

“What time?”

Okay, or “What time now?”

Mấy giờ rồi?

Let's review numbers a little bit.

Một, hai, ba, bốn, năm, sáu, bảy, tám, chín, mười, mười một, mười hai.

Okay, so from one o'clock to twelve o'clock, you only have to count from one to twelve

and then you put the word giờ after the numbers, then it's fine.

For example, một giờ, “one o'clock”, hai giờ, “two o'clock”.

In Vietnamese, you can say rưỡi, rưỡi.

Here the r sound, you will pronounce like “z" sound, it's okay.

You can actually say r, but it's not really necessary, especially I'm from the north.

For some words like rau, “vegetable”, rau, we also pronounce like “z" sound in English.

So rưỡi, rưỡi.

“Half past two”, you can say hai rưỡi, hai rưỡi

“Half past three”, ba rưỡi

and “half past four”, bốn rưỡi, bốn rưỡi.

Okay, so next one I'd like to share is kém, kém.

So kém here means how many minutes to the next hour.

For example, hai giờ kém mười lăm, hai giờ kém mười lăm means “quarter to two”.

So in Vietnamese we don't have the word for quarter, we only count numbers, we only count minutes: mười lăm.

Ba giờ kém mười lăm means quarter to three, ba giờ kém mười lăm, ba giờ kém mười lăm.

Now next one, bốn giờ kém mười lăm, bốn giờ kém mười lăm means “quarter to four”.

Now how about quarter past two?

In Vietnamese we will say hai giờ mười lăm

Hai giờ mười lăm, it means “quarter past two”.

So in Vietnamese we don't have the word for past, you only have to count the hour and the minutes, then it's fine.

Hai giờ: 2 o'clock

mười lăm: 15 minutes

Hai giờ mười lăm

Now let's practice one more time from the beginning until now.

Một giờ, một giờ, một giờ,

Một giờ mười lăm, một giờ mười lăm, một giờ mười lăm, một giờ mười lăm.

Một rưỡi, một rưỡi, một rưỡi

Hai giờ kém mười lăm, hai giờ kém mười lăm, hai giờ kém mười lăm

Ba giờ, ba giờ, ba giờ.

Bình thường mấy giờ bạn phải đi làm?

Thường thì 8 giờ tôi phải đến công ty.

Hôm nay mấy giờ em muốn đi ăn tối?

Hay là gặp nhau lúc 6 giờ đi?

Okay, so I hope that these short conversations will help you how to pronounce and how to put the verb or put the words in this sentence.

Also it's very easy when you ask about time even for old people or even for young people.

You can just say Bây giờ là mấy giờ? or Mấy giờ rồi?

Okay, but if you want to show more respect or if you want to be more polite, so you remember how to call people or how to greet people,

you only have to put the pronoun before the questions then it's fine.

For example, Chị ơi, bây giờ là mấy giờ?

Chị ơi, bây giờ là mấy giờ?

“Excuse me, what time is it?”

Chị ơi, bây giờ là mấy giờ?

Anh ơi, bây giờ là mấy giờ?

And after that when they tell you the time, then of course we have to say thank you, right?

So you can just say Cảm ơn anh or Cảm ơn chị.

Cảm ơn anh

Cảm ơn chị

and it's fine, very polite.

Okay, that's all for the lesson today.

I hope you like it and I hope that it's helpful for you sometimes.

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Thank you so much again for watching the video and see you in the next video.

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