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- Topic: Vietnamese >
- "Các con ong cắn cô gái."
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Yes you are right Sam, bees can bite. Bees bite or rather chew on things. In the context of the above sentence, i strongly believe it means the bee stings.
I have never been to Vietnam, so I cannot comment on the wildlife there, but I immediately thought of the sweat bees I have encountered, which will bite you. They are nowhere near as dangerous as multiple bee stings would be, but nonetheless, not a pleasant experience!
In the case about animals, in Vietnamese, the word 'các' is always replaced by the word 'những'.
As far as I know from the limited context here you may mean con as in the title in which case it would mean "you all" when talking to a group of children whom you are much older than
You're right! In the meantime I've learned that các is usually used for humans and những for both humans and animals/things.
The former means to bite (con chó cắn) and the latter to sting (con muỗi đốt).
For cô gái, cô is the classifier. Cô is a noun that basically translates to "Miss" (or aunt), gái means "girl", and together it means a young girl.
Cô An, for example, means "Ms./Mrs./Aunt An". As for knowing when it means Ms./Mrs. or just Aunt, you won't know if you are an outsider to the conversation. Relationship pronouns are complex in Vietnamese.
There is a difference between "stings" and "bite". One is done with the mouth and one is done with a stinger. This sentence is teaching the word for "bite".
So weird co gái translates to the girl but in other cases little girl ?
