How to say in Vietnamese: hello, goodbye and everything else
The way Vietnamese say “Happy New Year” is “Congrats (on) New Year”.
And here’s happy new year in Vietnamese: Chúc mừng năm mới.
And the mapping to English:
| Vietnamese | Chúc mừng | năm | mới |
| English | Congrats | year | new |
The phrase “new year” is translated to “năm mới” in Vietnamese because in Vietnamese, adjs are put after the nouns. You can review it here.
And a few notes about practical usage:
The Vietnamese word for day is ngày.
The very good news about learning how to say day of the week in Vietnamese is that, assuming you have gone through the lesson on how to say Vietnamese numbers, you have already known it!
As a recap, we have learned in that lesson on numbers that to say an ordinal number (1st, second, third, etc.), we simply add the word thứ in front of the number, with the exception of 1st being: thứ nhất.
Now, to say a day of the week in Vietnamese, we also use the same word thứ in front of a number!
The Vietnamese translation of thank you or thanks is cám ơn. The phrase thank you in English already has the you inside, but the phrase cám ơn doesn’t. So usually, to say thank you in Vietnamese, we say cám ơn + [the appropriate word for you].
Thank you/Thanks = Cám ơn + [Word for You]
If you want to review how to say you in Vietnamese, here is the lesson. As some examples, you would hear people say cám ơn anh (anh is for male, older than you) and cám ơn chị (chị is for female, older than you), among other cases for the word you.
It’s worth noting that saying just cám ơn is okay grammatically, but probably not so fine in practice. The reason is that saying cám ơn without the word for you is considered to be either too formal, in some situations, or more frequently, unfriendly. As such, as a friendly person, you would use cám ơn + [word for you].
The Vietnamese word for very much is rất nhiều with rất being the translation of very and nhiều the translation of much.
Thank you very much = Cám ơn + [Word for You] (Optional) + rất nhiều.
For instance, saying thank you to an older lady would be: cám ơn chị rất nhiều and cám ơn ông rất nhiều is used to thank you very much a male about the same age as your grandpa. (Review why ông is used here).
Different from the case of cám ơn discussed above, it’s perfectly fine to use just cám ơn rất nhiều with thout the word for you.
In English, one can choose to say you’re welcome or no problem without any practical difference (there is, but for most situations they are 100% synonymous). In Vietnamese, it’s simpler as there is almost only one phrase:
You’re welcome/No problem = Không có gì/chi
The literal translation of không có gì or không có chi is there isn’t any problem. You may have noted that there is no Vietnamese word for problem in không có gì/chi. Indeed, the longer phrase is không có vấn đề gì/chi where vấn đề is the Vietnamese word for problem But since it’s longer, you would virtually always hear the phrase không có gì/chi as the answer for thank you.
Note that sometimes không sao is used as an alternative to không có chi/gì. In practice, this phrase, as well as không có chi/gì, is often used to respond to someone saying sorry: Someone says Xin lỗi and you reply Không sao, which means the same as no problem in English.
The Vietnamese word for color is màu. Sometimes, you would also hear its related word màu sắc, which can, in many cases, be used as the equivalent of màu. However, màu sắc also subtly implies the general look-and-feel of the item as a result of its color.
Below are the various ways you can use to enquire about colors. For each question, you would see the literal mappings to English.
| Màu yêu thích của bạn | là gì? |
| Your favorite color | is what? |
| Bạn | thích | cái váy | (có) màu gì? |
| You | like | the dress | (has) what color? |
| Quần jean của anh ta | (có) màu gì? |
| His jeans | (has) what color? |
If you need an explanation on why your favorite color is translated into Màu yêu thích của bạn in Vietnamese, you can take a look at the tutorial on how to say my, your, etc in Vietnamese.
In the last 2 examples, màu acts as if it were a verb: cái váy màu gì?. This can be explained by saying that the word có, which means have in English, is being omitted. You can ask with or without the word có, but most people would omit it.
[Item] + màu gì?
The following table shows you how to say various colors in Vietnamese
| blue: xanh dương (also: xanh da trời) |
green: xanh lá cây | red: đỏ | purple: tím |
| yellow: vàng | orange: (da) cam | brown: đà (also: nâu) | black: đen |
| pink: hồng | white: trắng | grey: xám |
The only point you need to note is that xanh is a generic color word that can refer to either blue or green. So saying xanh is ambiguous without the context. The word for blue in Vietnamese is xanh dương or xanh da trời, refering to the color of the sky. Green in Vietnamese is xanh lá cây, literally refer to the color of leaves.
Having learned the color words in Vietnamese, we can now answer the questions about color in the first section.
Question: Màu yêu thích của bạn là gì?
Answer: Màu yêu thích của tôi là màu xanh da trời
Question: Bạn thích cái váy màu gì?
Answer: Tôi thích cái váy màu hồng
Question: Quần jean của anh ta (có) màu gì?
Answer: Quần jean của anh ta màu xám.
[Item] + màu + [Name of the color]
To refer to a color as a noun, you would use màu + [Name of the color] such as đỏ/xanh/vàng, etc. However, when the color is used as an adjective, màu is often, but not always, omitted.
| cái áo sơ mi đỏ | trông rất đẹp |
| the red shirt | looks very nice |
| Cái khăn choàng xám | rất hợp với em |
| The grey scarf | suits you nicely |
In this lesson, we’d learn to say dates in Vietnamese, such as 12/09/2012.
This lesson would rely on our previous lesson on how to say days of the week in Vietnamese so
if you are not very confident yet, do take a quick review that lesson before continuing with this lesson.
The Vietnamese word for month is tháng.
And similar to the way we say days of the week, months are also numbered from 1 to 12 with
January assigned number 1, February: 2 and so on till December: 12.
| January | Tháng giêng (also: tháng một) |
| February | Tháng hai |
| March | Tháng ba |
| April | Tháng bốn (also: tháng tư) |
| May | Tháng năm |
| June | Tháng sáu |
| July | Tháng bảy |
| August | Tháng tám |
| September | Tháng chín |
| October | Tháng mười |
| November | Tháng mười một |
| December | Tháng mười hai |
As can be seen from the above table, there are only 2 notes to take.
The first one is about January, which some people, usually the older generations,
call tháng giêng.
Saying tháng một for January is perfectly fine.
The other small note is about April: which can said tháng bốn or tháng tư.
This is not really an exception because the number 4 in Vietnamese can be referred to as
bốn or, less commonly these days, tư.
To say the 23rd of a month in Vietnamese: simply use the wordy for day, which is ngày, + [number]
Ngày + [Number (1 – 31)]
The word for year in Vietnamese is năm.
So to say 2012: năm 2012
Having learned how to say day of the month, month and year,
you’re now completely ready to say dates in Vietnamese.
How do we say 12/09/2012 in English?
Well, before we can say it, we need to know what it means by writing “12/09/2012”.
It seems that in Britain or Australia, “12/09/2012” refers to September, 9th, 2012 while in America this would refer to September, 9th, 2012.
In Vietnamese, we’ll interpret a date using the format: dd/mm/yy(yy), the same as the British/Australian way.
While we can say interchangeably the twelfth of September, 2012 or September, the twelfth, 2012 in English,
in Vietnamese it’s almost always said in the order of [day of the month], [month], [year]
Ngày + [Number (1 – 31)] + tháng + [Number (1 – 12)] + năm [Number]
Let’s doing some exercises.
How do you say “12/09/2012” in spoken form?
It’s ngày mười hai tháng chín năm hai nghìn không trăm mười hai.
The table below shows you the details.
| 12 | /09 | /2012 |
| ngày mười hai | tháng chín | năm hai nghìn không trăm mười hai |
If you need to review how to say numbers in Vietnamese,
the automatic Vietnamese number speller is always there to help.
How about “Wednesday, 04/July/2012”? It’s thứ tư ngày bốn tháng bảy năm 2012.
