Lesson 3: Nouns and bare nouns

In Vietnamese, nouns usually appear in their bare form. There are no articles like “a” or “the”, and nouns do not change form to show plural. The same noun can refer to one thing, many things, or an entire category.

Because of this, meaning comes mainly from context, not from the noun itself.

Tôi thích cà phê.
“I like coffee.”

Here, cà phê refers to coffee in general. The same bare noun can also be used in more specific situations:

Tôi mua cà phê.
“I bought coffee.”

Depending on context, this could mean some coffee, a coffee drink, or coffee as a product. The form of the noun does not change.

Bare nouns can also refer to whole classes or concepts:

Mèo thích cá.
“Cats like fish.”

Or to something specific when the situation already makes it clear:

Bé mèo đâu rồi?
“Where’s the cat?”

Vietnamese sometimes adds small words to make a noun more specific or limited, but this is optional. The bare noun remains the default.

Mấy con mèo chạy mất rồi.
“Those few cats ran away.”

Tôi cần một quyển sách.
“I need a book.”

These added words help narrow down meaning, but they are not required for a noun to work in a sentence.

The key thing to notice is that Vietnamese nouns themselves do not encode number or definiteness. Instead, listeners rely on context and, when needed, simple markers to understand whether a noun is general, specific, singular, or plural.