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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 the phrase bao nhiêu tiền? meaning “How much is it?” In this lesson let’s see how we might answer that question by counting dong in Vietnamese. In Vietnam, the currency is dong. But as I mentioned in the last lesson, we have to say big numbers when we’re talking about prices in Vietnamese. So, the usual currency unit in Vietnam is nghìn đồng. nghìn means “thousand”.
Let’s try now to say some prices in Vietnamese. Start by trying to say "27,000 dong."
Hai mươi bảy nghìn đồng
[slowly] Hai mươi bảy nghìn đồng.
This is really straightforward. Simply add nghìn đồng after the number. We learned that 27 is hai mươi bảy, so “27,000 dong” is hai mươi bảy nghìn đồng
Let’s try another example:
“6,500 dong"
Sáu nghìn năm trăm đồng
At this point, you may be wondering “Oh, we haven’t learned the hundreds.” But don’t worry. 500 dong is the smallest currency unit in Vietnam, so it’s the only time you'll need to worry about hundreds when talking about prices. We learned that “100” is một trăm, remember? So “500” is năm trăm. So say the thousands, then the hundreds, then add dong at the end.
Sáu nghìn năm trăm đồng
Here’s one more example -
“32,500 dong”
Ba mươi hai nghìn năm trăm đồng
That takes a lot of effort to say, doesn’t it! But there’s a shorter way to say “500” when talking about prices. That is rưỡi. So “6500” can be shortened to sáu nghìn rưỡi and “32,500” is ba hai nghìn rưỡi. You don’t need to add ”dong” at the end here.
Can you pronounce this word?
rưỡi (pause) rưỡi.
It is a bit difficult to pronounce, so if you can’t say it, just stick to năm trăm. rưỡi is a casual word Vietnamese people use in daily conversation, so you may hear it.
And please remember that “500” only becomes rưỡi when it comes to money and when it is part of a bigger number. So if something costs 500 dong, then it is năm trăm đồng, you can’t say rưỡi here.
Now it’s time for Giang’s Insights.
When talking about prices in Vietnamese daily conversation, you don’t need to say dong at the end. Simply say the number then add nghìn, because in this context, it’s easily understood that you’re talking about prices.
You should ask your friends in Vietnam if they want to go shopping with you to practice these phrases! But first you’ll have to check if they have other plans or not. Do you know how to ask that in Vietnamese? If not, I’ll see you in the next lesson!
Tạm biệt!

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