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Lesson Transcript

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 talk about age in both formal and informal situations. Now we’re going to learn how to talk about things you own in Vietnamese.
Let's start with a question you might be asked:
Bạn có ô tô không? “Do you have a car?”
Let’s take a closer look at this question.
Bạn, as you have learned, is the general pronoun meaning “you”.
Có means “to have”.
Có...không? means “Do you have...?”.
Ô tô, means “a car”
[slowly] Bạn có ô tô không?
So if you *do* have a car, how can you answer this question?
First, turn the pronoun bạn into the 1st person pronoun tôi—which means “I”!
Then follow it with có, which means “have” and finally ô tô.
The whole answer is - Tôi có ô tô.
In informal situations, you can simply answer with Tôi có which means “I have.” or just có which is the same as saying “yes”.
Again, in formal situations:
Bạn có ô tô không?
Tôi có ô tô.
In informal situations:
Bạn có ô tô không?
Tôi có or Có.
Now for another example - let’s say a classmate wants to borrow a pen from you. He might ask Bạn có but không? Which is “Do you have a pen?”
If you only have a red pen, you can answer Tôi chỉ có bút đỏ. “I only have a red pen.”
Here, chỉ có means “only have”.
đỏ means “red”, so bút đỏ means “a red pen”.
Notice that in Vietnamese, the adjective is placed after the noun, the opposite of English.
Tôi chỉ có bút đỏ.
Now it’s time for Giang’s insights.
If you want to ask your close friends this question, you won’t need to add any pronouns at the beginning. Simply say, Có bút không? Cho mượn tí. This literally means “Have a pen? Lend it to me.” But remember that you can only say this if you’re talking with someone around your age and who is very close to you. Otherwise, it will sound rude.
In recent lessons, we have learned about the verbs là, “to be”, and có, “to have”.
Next time, we’ll learn how to use these two verbs in their negative forms in order to say “I’m not” and “I don’t have”.
I'll be waiting for you in the next 3 phút học tiếng Việt lesson.
Tạm biệt!

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