Pronouns
Vietnamese has no plain "I" and no plain "you". What it has is a kinship system used as pronouns: you address everyone as if they were a relative, and you refer to yourself by the matching term from their point of view. Choosing correctly is the single most important act of politeness in the language, and getting it wrong is the most common way a learner gives offence without knowing it.
The kin terms
| term | literally | use it for | and then "I" is… |
|---|---|---|---|
| em | younger sibling | anyone younger than you; a waiter, a shop assistant | anh / chị |
| anh | older brother | a man slightly older than you (or your age, to be safe) | em |
| chị | older sister | a woman slightly older | em |
| cô | (father's) younger sister | a woman a generation up; a female teacher | cháu, em |
| chú | (father's) younger brother | a man a generation up, younger than your father | cháu |
| bác | (father's) older sibling | a man or woman older than your parents | cháu |
| ông | grandfather | an old man; also "sir" | cháu |
| bà | grandmother | an old woman; also "madam" | cháu |
| con | child | (to your own parents; and, in the south, a young person to any adult) | bố / mẹ / cô / chú… |
The system is relative: the same person is anh to one speaker and em to another. The rule of thumb is to place the other person by their apparent age against yours, and to err older — calling someone anh who could be em flatters them; the reverse is an insult.
Between two strangers of similar age, a man is anh and a woman chị, and both call themselves em or tôi. A woman may call a man of her own age anh and herself em while he does the same in reverse — both taking the lower place. That is normal.
The neutral and the intimate pronouns
| pronoun | who says it | register |
|---|---|---|
| tôi | I — to strangers, in public, on forms | neutral, slightly distant |
| tớ / cậu | I / you — between friends, Hanoi | close |
| mình / bạn | I / you — between friends, the south; bạn "friend" is the polite "you" to a peer whose age you cannot place | close / polite |
| tao / mày | I / you — the closest friends, siblings, or a fight | intimate or rude |
| ta | I — royal, literary, or "we" | formal |
Tôi is safe everywhere and warm nowhere. It is what television announcers say and what you write on a form; among people who know each other it sounds like a wall.
Third person: kin term + ấy
There is no "he" or "she" either. Take the kin term and add ấy "that":
anh ấy — he (a man you would call anh) · chị ấy — she · cô ấy — she (younger woman) · ông ấy — he (old man) · bà ấy — she (old woman)
Nó is "it" — and "he/she" for children, animals and, between friends, people you are being dismissive about. Họ is "they" for people; chúng nó the casual version.
Plurals
Chúng tôi "we (not you)", chúng ta "we (including you)", các anh / các chị / các em "you all", các bạn "you all, everyone" — see the plurals chapter.
Possession: của
There are no possessive pronouns. Put của "of" and the pronoun after the noun, or just the pronoun:
sách của tôi — my book · nhà của anh — your house · mẹ tôi — my mother (kin terms drop của)
The deferential frame
To someone above you, take the lower term for yourself and close the sentence with ạ:
Em cảm ơn anh ạ. — "Thank you." (staff to customer, junior to senior) Cháu chào bà ạ. — "Hello, grandmother / madam."
Ạ is the whole of Vietnamese deference in one syllable. Dạ opens a sentence the same way, and dạ / vâng are the polite "yes"; ừ is the yes between equals and never to an elder.
If you speak Korean
You already do this. Calling a slightly older man anh is calling him 형 or 오빠; chị is 누나 or 언니; chú and cô are 아저씨 and 아줌마 said kindly; ông and bà are 할아버지 and 할머니; em is what you call a 동생. The one difference is that Vietnamese has no separate word for the speaker's own gender: anh covers both 형 and 오빠, chị both 누나 and 언니 — the term depends only on the person addressed, not on who is speaking.
The speech levels map too. Ạ at the end of the sentence, plus taking the lower term for yourself, is 존댓말; the friends' pronouns with nhé, hả and đi are 반말; tôi is the flat register of 뉴스 and forms. Where Korean puts the politeness in the verb ending (-요, -습니다), Vietnamese puts it in the pronoun and in one particle, and leaves the verb alone.
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