Con (Cn)

Situations

S1: Hà and Nam were talking about animals. Hà said to Nam:

Tôi rất thích chó. Nhà tôi có nuôi ba con chó.
(I like dogs very much. My family has three dogs.)

As Hà said so, Nam said:

Tôi đang muốn mua mấy con để giữ rẫy cà phê.
(I want to buy some (dogs) that will watch over my coffee farm.)

Similar to other unit nouns (cái, chiếc, bức...), con is used after cardinal numbers (một, hai, ba, bốn...) or quantifiers (mấy, vài, cả...) in order to unitize the mass nouns that refer to animate things mentioned later.

S2: Nam and Hà went to the zoo. They were watching the monkeys eating fruit. Hà pointed at a monkey and said to Nam:

Con khỉ đang ăn trái chuối ở đằng kia trông dễ thương quá. Mình thích con khỉ đó.
(The monkey over there that is eating bananas looks very cute. I like that monkey.)

In S2, con occurs before the mass noun (which indicates an animal) defined by a distinctive modifier đang ăn chuối (eating bananas) or a demonstrative word (này, kia, đó...).

S3: Hoa and her mother are sitting in the house. Suddenly, Hoa's mother hears the dog barking. She says to Hoa:

Con ra ngoài xem sao mà con chó sủa dữ thế.
(Hoa, go out to see why the dog is barking so much.)

In this situation, con appears before the noun chó without the corresponding conditions mentioned in the situations S1 and S2 because, in this context, Hoa knows which dog her mother refers to, that is to say, the noun phrase con chó (the dog) is defined by the communicative context.

Definition

Con, as a classifying noun, placed before a noun indicating animals, refers to each individual member of that group of animals.

  • Classifying noun con and other words with the same origin. Cf:
[1] Tôi có hai con: một gái, một trai. Năm nay con chị 10 tuổi còn thằng em 6 tuổi.
    (I have two children: one daughter and one son. This year, the older sister is ten years old and her brother is six years old.)

In the example above, the first con is understood as "child" in relation to his / her parents, whereas the second con is a noun which refers to the female gender irrespective of the attitude of the speaker. (Similarly, thằng refers to the male gender irrespective of the attitude of the speaker.)

[2] Nhà tôi có hai con chó con.
    (My family has two puppies.)

In this example, the first con is a unit noun, and the second con is a common noun; it refers to an animal which was born directly by another animal.

  • con and cái: Con and cái are classifying nouns; con refers to each individual member of a group of animals. But cái refers to each individual member of a group of inanimate things. Cf. cái1 (p. 35).

Combinations

  • cái + con: To indicate clearly and to show (at the same time) the idea of not being pleased with the animal mentioned before, the speaker can use the demonstrative cái in front of the unit noun con. Ex.:
[1] Cái con chó nhà anh đã cắn con mèo của tôi.
    (Your dog has bitten my cat.)

Cf. cái2 (p. 43).

  • con + mắt / tim / đường ...: The classifying noun con also refers to an individual unit of some inanimate things which are seen as "animals" because their activity or forms are similar to those of animals. For example: con mắt (an eye), con tim (a heart), con tàu (a ship), con đường (a road, a way), con sông (a river), con thuyền (a boat), etc. Ex.:
[2] Con sông này bắt nguồn từ đâu vậy?
    (Where does this river originate?)
[3] Tôi bị đau mắt. Con mắt phải của tôi sưng húp lên.
    (I have sore eyes. My right eye is swollen.)