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- Topic: Vietnamese >
- "Ngày mai là thứ tư?"
10 Comments
19
How would we know that this is a question and not a statement if it was spoken rather than written?
Like in English, there are points of inflection in Vietnamese to indictae a question. Too bad I can't tell you the difference over an audio file. I can assure you that this speaker did have a point of inflection on the very last word. It's so subtle, even for a tonal language.
I put "Is it Wednesday tomorrow?" and the answer said "It is Wednesday tomorrow?". If the second one is correct, the first one definitely should be! Because, while you CAN make it a question with just your inflection, the normal way would be with the word order, "Is it..."
if this is asking, is tomorrow wednesday, shouldn't the VN sentence end with không? the question mark in the exercise should be deleted as the VN question is a statement.
Questions in Vietnamese always don't need indicaters. It's based on preference. I do recommend those who are new to speaking Vietnamese to use "phải không" at the end of their question to avoid confusion. I hope this helps!
Agreed. We shouldn't really use interogative statements in English. The verb should be before the subject (unlike French, where it is commonplace). It's interesting to know that Vietnamese people do it too... as I wouldn't expect it from a tonal language.
