Learn how to ask "Where?"
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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 ask "What" questions in Vietnamese. |
| This time we will learn "Where" questions. |
| You're still talking on your phone with your Vietnamese friend. Now you want to ask where he is. You will ask him Bạn đang ở đâu đấy? |
| You know the drill: let's break it down! |
| Bạn as you know, is “you” |
| đang means “in progress, currently” |
| ở means “at or in” |
| đâu means “where” and this is the question word we’ll learn in this lesson. |
| Finally đấy is a particle often used with this question word. |
| Bạn đang ở đâu đấy? |
| So, "Where" is mainly translated as ở đâu. To form a question using “where”, start with the subject, followed by a verb or verb phrase, then put ở đâu right after the verb. Finally, the optional particle. |
| If you want to ask "Where do you live?" You will say Bạn sống ở đâu? |
| As you can guess sống means “to live”. |
| However, if you want to ask where someone is going, you will say Bạn đang đi đâu đấy? Here you remove ở and just say đi đâu which literally means “go to where”. |
| However, if the main verb of the question is “to be” then the rule is simpler. Just add ở đâu after the subject, and you’ll have a complete question. |
| If you want to ask “Where is the bank?”, you’ll say Ngân hàng ở đâu vậy? |
| Ngân hàng means “bank” and here we use the particle vậy. |
| If you remember, we learned about this in the previous lesson. Basically, there are 3 common particles you can add to the end of “where” questions and they are đấy, vậy or thế. But the exact rules are a little too complicated for an Absolute Beginner level series! |
| Now it’s time for Giang’s Insights. |
| One way to ask where someone came from is to ask that literally: "Where do you come from?” Bạn từ đâu đến?" Here we say từ đâu instead of ở đâu because it means “from where”. Literally, “from where you come”? However, it is more natural to use the question we learned in lesson 11 about nationality Bạn là người nước nào? |
| In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the Vietnamese word for "Where". |
| In the next lesson, you’ll learn more about asking questions, this time using "When". |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next 3 phút học tiếng Việt. |
| Tạm biệt! |
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