Learn how to ask "Who?"
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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 "When" questions in Vietnamese. |
| This time, we are going to ask "Who" questions. |
| Imagine you want to ask your friend who the girl just behind him is. |
| Here, a question you can ask is Cô gái kia là ai? |
| First we have- |
| Cô gái which means “girl” |
| Then kia, which means “that” |
| là is the verb “to be” |
| And finally ai means “who” |
| Cô gái kia là ai? |
| So in Vietnamese, "Who" is mainly translated as Ai. |
| For example, if you want to ask "Who are these people?" you will say Những người kia là ai? |
| When the main verb is là - to be, ai will come at the end of the question, right after là. |
| When the main verb is not là, which means you don’t want to ask who a certain person is, but want to ask who does or did something, Ai will come at the beginning of the question, and be followed by the main verb. |
| For example "Who painted this wall?" is |
| Ai đã sơn bức tường này? |
| đã means “already”, indicating a past action. |
| sơn means “to paint” |
| bức tường means “wall” |
| And này means “this”. |
| Once more - Ai đã sơn bức tường này? |
| If you want to ask "Whose pencil is this?" you will have to say Cái bút chì này là của ai? |
| cái is the classifier for objects |
| bút chì means “pencil” |
| này means “this” |
| là is the verb “to be” |
| And của ai means “whose”. Của is added before ai to show possession. In this case, as the verb is “to be”, the question word của ai comes at the end. |
| Now it’s time for Giang’s Insights. |
| If someone that you didn't expect is knocking at your door in Vietnam, the common question you can ask is Ai đấy? before opening the door. This means “who is it?” |
| If you want to be more polite and show respect to that person, you can ask, Ai đấy ạ? |
| In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the word for "Who", which is Ai in Vietnamese, and its variations. |
| The next lesson will be our last of this absolute beginner series. |
| We will deal with the last question word vì sao, which means “why”. I’ll be waiting for you in the next 3 phút học tiếng Việt lesson. |
| Tạm biệt! |
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