Vietnamese to English examples

Tôi muốn học tiếng Anh nhanh chóng.

→ I want to learn English quickly.

The SVO structure is the same in both languages — one of the reasons Vietnamese speakers find beginner English sentence structure relatively familiar.

Tôi đã học tiếng Anh được ba năm.

→ I have been studying English for three years.

Vietnamese uses 'đã' as a past marker word before the unchanged verb. English uses the present perfect continuous tense — the verb form itself must change.

Bạn có thể nói chậm hơn không?

→ Can you speak more slowly?

Vietnamese questions add 'không' at the end of a statement. English moves the auxiliary verb 'can' to the front — a structural difference Vietnamese speakers must practise.

Nếu tôi học nhiều hơn, tôi đã đậu kỳ thi.

→ If I had studied more, I would have passed the exam.

Vietnamese expresses this hypothetical situation with 'nếu' (if) and unchanged verbs. English requires specific past perfect verb forms to signal the counterfactual meaning.

Tiếng Anh là một ngôn ngữ rất quan trọng.

→ English is a very important language.

Similar structure to English. Vietnamese requires 'là' (is) unlike some languages that drop the verb in simple statements.