Subject, verb and object are the most important parts in Vietnamese construction of a sentence. But other part is also important that is unit nouns or known as countable nouns or classifiers such as con (gà - chicken), cái (nhà - house), chiếc (xe - car)… Today, let’s study more about this important issue. 

How to use “Classifiers” in Vietnamese 

As we know, English has no unit nouns, it’s quite simple to count the number of objects or people. Such as singular noun - “a cat” or plural noun - “2 cats” with “s” or “es” at the end of the word. But in Vietnamese, we have “unit nouns” and this is the construction of sentence in Vietnamese with “classifiers” 

Ex: 
Tôi có 1 con mèo – I have a cat
Anh ta có 2 cái nhà – He has 2 houses
 

So, you could see in Vietnamese, we use the construction with a unit noun like this: 

Subject + Verb + number (1,2,3…) + unit noun + noun

For understanding easily, you could see how to use classifiers in the following table:

No.	VIETNAMESE	ENGLISH
1	1 CON MÈO	A CAT
2	CON MÈO NÀY	THIS CAT
3	CON MÈO ĐÓ	THAT CAT
4	CON MÈO THỨ NHẤT	CAT NO.1
5	CON MÈO THỨ HAI	CAT NO.2
6	CON MÈO ĐẦU TIÊN	FIRST CAT
7	CON MÈO CUỐI CÙNG	LAST CAT
8	CON MÈO NÀO?	WHICH CAT?
9	CON MÈO MỚI	NEW CAT
10	NHIỀU CON MÈO	MANY CATS
11	MỘT CÁI TÔ	A BIG BOWL
12	MỘT TÔ HỦ TIẾU	A BIG BOWL OF NOODLE
13	MỘT CÁI LY	A GLASS
14	MỘT LY NƯỚC LỌC	A GLASS OF WATER

List of “Classifiers” in Vietnamese

COMMON CLASSIFIERS

No.	Classifier	Meaning	Used for
1	Người	People	People, woman, man, children
2	Cái	Thing, piece	Shirt, trouser, dress, chair, table, bag, hat, bowl, plate, spoon, fork, watch, clock, glass, bottle, machine
3	Con	Animal	Animal, doll, road, river
4	Đôi	Couple	Shoes, chopstick
5	Bộ	Set	Clothes, movie, drama, story
6	Quả	Fruit	Fruit, ball, mountain
7	Chiếc	One	Car, motorcycle, ship, airplane
8	Cây	Tree	Pen, pencil, umbrella, lipstick, tree
9	Món	Thing, kind	Food, goods
10	Thỏi	Ingot	Lipstick, gold
11	Quyển	Book	Book, notebook, magazine
12	Ly	Glass	Glass of water, glass of beer
13	Tách	Cup	Cup of tea, cup of coffee
14	Chén	Small bowl	Bowl of soup, bowl of rice
15	Chai	Bottle	Bottle of beer, bottle of water
16	Dĩa	Plate	Food
17	Cục	Chunk	Soap, candy, stone
18	Sợi	Line	Necklace, string, hair, thread
19	Chỗ	Place	Seat
20	Cuộn	Reel	Tape, cassette, string, thread
21	Điếu	Roll	Cigarette
22	Gói	Pack	Gift pack, candy pack, cookie pack, anything is packed
23	Chuyện	Story	Story
24	Bản	Version	Contract, document, copy
25	Ngôi	House	House, star
26	Miếng	Piece	Piece of bread, piece of meat, piece of cookie
27	Bông	Flower	Flower
28	Lần	Time	Time
29	Phòng	Room	Room

Exercises