Sentence Order

As discussed in the intro, English and Vietnamese have a very similar grammatical structure on a basic level.

Similar to English, Vietnamese follows a Subject-Verb-Object sentence structure. Now what does that mean in English? Let’s break down an example:

_“He opened the door.”_


Subject = He


Verb = opened


Object = the door

Vietnamese: Anh ấy mở cái cửa

English: He opened the door

Anh ấy = He

mở = open

cái cửa = the door

As you can see, the general sentence structure between both languages didn’t change at all.

One thing that is different though, is how adjectives work; the words used to describe things in a language. Let’s take a look at our example again, but this time, let’s say that instead of opening just a door, let’s see him open up a red door.

Vietnamese: Anh Phúc mở cái cửa đỏ.

English: Phúc opened the red door.

đỏ = red

You will notice that instead of the word for red (đỏ) _is behind the word for door (_cửa) instead of in front of it. That’s because in Vietnamese, when you use an adjective to describe something, you always put it behind the thing you are describing. With that out of the way, you now have a basic idea of how to make a sentence in Vietnamese.