Lắm (Adj)

Situations

S1: Hoa invited Lan to go swimming. Lan refused because she thought there were too many people swimming on Saturday afternoon.

Chiều thứ bảy hồ bơi lắm người, làm sao bơi!
(On Saturday afternoon there are too many people in the swimming pool. How can we swim!)

In this situation, Lan used lắm to mean that the swimming pool is more crowded on Saturdays than other days of the week, and that they cannot swim.

Definition

Lắm, as an adjective, is used before certain nouns to indicate a large amount according to the speaker.

  • Lắm is grouped with the adjectives nhiều, ít, etc. Of these, lắm is used in spoken Vietnamese and often connotes a negative attitude from the speaker. Compared with nhiều, the use of lắm in combination with nouns is more restrictive. Cf:
[1a] Sao anh đọc nhiều (sách) vậy?
     (Why did you read many books?) (Asking about the purpose of reading.)
[1b] Sao anh đọc lắm (sách) vậy?
     (Why did you read so many books?) (Stress on 'so many'.)

(In [1b], the speaker might look angry because the person only reads books.)

[1c] Sao anh mua lắm sách thế?
     (Why did you buy a lot of books?) (The speaker feels uneasy about the expense.)

Combinations

  • lắm + noun: Lắm is usually combined with nouns such as chuyện, điều, lời, người, tiền, etc. Some of these (lắm lời, lắm điều...) are used as idiomatic expressions.

  • Lắm can be used after words of degree:

[1] Cô ta hơi lắm lời.
    (She is a little talkative.)
[2] Im đi! Chị lắm điều quá!
    (Be quiet! You are too gossipy!)
  • lắm lúc / lắm khi (= nhiều lúc, nhiều khi):
[3] Sống độc thân, lắm lúc tôi cũng thấy buồn.
    (Being single, I am sad many a time.)
  • lắm used after some active / stative verbs conveys a negative meaning:
[4] Sao các bà ấy nói lắm thế!
    (How these ladies talk so much!)
[5] Sao Hoa ngủ lắm thế không biết nữa!
    (I don't know why Hoa sleeps so much!)