Vietnamese for Engineers: Site Vocabulary, Tones and Phrases

You have just joined a factory build in an industrial park outside Ho Chi Minh City. The drawings are in English and the contract is in English, but the site runs in Vietnamese. At 6:50 in the morning the foreman, whom everyone calls anh Tâm, gives the day's instructions to a crew of twenty. You catch đổ, bê tông and tầng hai, and you understand that something is happening on the second floor today. The rest goes by too fast to follow.

The site manager speaks some English, and there is an interpreter in the office, but neither stands next to you on the scaffold. What you need there is small and specific: the names of things, a few verbs for progress, and the right way to speak to people who are older or younger than you. Vietnamese grammar helps more than you might expect, since verbs do not conjugate and there are no articles.

This article is for foreign engineers, supervisors and technicians who work on construction and industrial sites in Vietnam. It covers how to address people, the six tones, site vocabulary in the order of a job, five grammar points, two conversations with translations, and how to practise, with a word set you can play straight away.

• Two things before the vocabulary: address and tones
• Site vocabulary in the order of a job
• Five grammar points that carry a site day
• Two conversations: planning a pour and correcting a colleague
• How to practise
• Frequently asked questions
• Where to start

Two things before the vocabulary: address and tones

Address: you choose a pronoun for every person

Vietnamese has no single word for you. People use family words, and you pick one for the other person and one for yourself according to who is older and by how much. On a site this decides whether a sentence sounds polite or abrupt.

As a foreigner you can always fall back on tôi for yourself, which is neutral, and still use the right family word for the other person. Avoid bạn with anyone older, because it is a word for peers.

You will hear foreign engineers addressed as anh or chị plus the first name, or as kỹ sư plus the name. If you are unsure, anh and chị are the safest start for a peer, and a worker will usually tell you if you got it wrong.

Tones: six of them

Every syllable has a tone, written with a mark, and a different tone is a different word. Learn the mark together with the word from the first day. The table uses site words, with the Northern pronunciation as the reference.

A pair worth knowing for a site is cột (column) and cốt (as in cốt thép, rebar). They differ only in tone, and you will hear both within a minute of a pour. Many Southern speakers pronounce the asking and tumbling tones the same way, so a Hanoi speaker and a Saigon speaker may sound different on words like kỹ and kiểm.

Site vocabulary in the order of a job

The six tables follow a job from people and site to inspection. Each word has an example you could hear on a site, and the English next to it. The 42 words of the game at the end of the article all appear in these tables.

People, site and contract

Chỉ huy trưởng is the title on Vietnamese site documents for the person in charge of the site, and it is often shortened in speech to anh or chị plus the name. Tổ trưởng leads a single crew, and you will work with this person more than with anyone else.

Drawings and documents

Structure and concrete

Workers say phân for centimetres and often ly for millimetres, as in thép mười ly for 10 mm bars. This is common on sites, especially in the south, and you will not find it in drawings, where units are written out. The verb you will hear with concrete is đổ (pour), and tháo (remove) with formwork.

Machines, scaffolding and installation

Safety

Inspection, defects and schedule

Signs you will read on the fence and the stairs

Five grammar points that carry a site day

1. Đã, đang, sẽ, rồi, chưa: progress without tenses

Vietnamese verbs do not change, and progress is shown with small words around them. Đã marks something done, đang something in progress and sẽ something planned. At the end of a sentence, rồi means already and chưa means not yet. In short answers people repeat the verb with rồi or chưa.

• Anh đã kiểm tra chưa? Kiểm tra rồi.
• Đang đổ bê tông tầng hai.
• Ngày mai sẽ tháo cốp pha.

English speakers tend to put đã in every past sentence, and to answer a question with không when they mean not yet. If someone asks Đổ chưa?, the answer for not yet is Chưa, while Không means it will not be done at all. That one word can move a schedule.

2. Ạ, nhé and dạ: politeness lives in small words

Dạ at the start of a reply and ạ at the end of a sentence show respect to an older or senior person. Nhé at the end of a request softens it into something closer to please, and is used with a peer or younger person. For a formal request, add giúp (help) or làm ơn.

• Anh cho tôi xem bản vẽ được không ạ?
• Em đeo dây an toàn giúp anh nhé.
• Dạ, em hiểu rồi ạ.

Learners often translate please as xin vui lòng in every sentence, which sounds like a notice on a wall. In speech, giúp, nhé and a pronoun do the job. A bare command with no particle and no pronoun sounds curt, even if the grammar is right.

3. Phải, không được, cấm, hãy, đừng: rules and orders

Phải means must, không được means not allowed and cấm means forbidden, which is the word on signs. In speech, hãy before a verb makes a request or an order, đừng before a verb means do not, and nhớ means remember to.

• Vào công trường phải đội mũ bảo hộ.
• Không được đứng dưới cần cẩu.
• Nhớ móc dây an toàn trước khi lên.

A common slip is to use không phải to mean not allowed. Không phải means is not (as in không phải bản mới nhất, it is not the latest version), while không được is the one for a ban. On a site that difference is the difference between a note and a rule.

4. Questions: không, chưa, phải không and the question words

A yes or no question ends in không for present facts, chưa for completion, and phải không or đúng không when you check something you think is true. The question words stay in place: mấy giờ (what time), bao nhiêu (how much), ở đâu (where), ai (who), khi nào (when).

• Bản vẽ này là bản mới nhất, phải không ạ?
• Xe bê tông đến lúc mấy giờ?
• Ai ra hiệu cho người lái cần cẩu?

Learners often answer with a bare có or không. Both exist, but on a site people usually repeat the verb, or use rồi and chưa: Xe đến chưa? Đến rồi. Repeating the verb also gives the listener a second chance to catch what you mean.

5. Classifiers and units

Between a number and a noun, Vietnamese often puts a classifier that depends on the thing counted. The ones you will use most on a site are in the table. Units go after the number, as in hai mét (2 m) or hai mươi phân (20 cm).

Learners usually drop the classifier and say hai thép. It is understood in context, but a quantity is the last thing you want to be unclear about on a delivery. When you give or check a number, use the classifier and repeat the unit.

Two conversations: planning a pour and correcting a colleague

The first conversation is the day before a slab pour. Sam, a foreign engineer, checks the plan with anh Hùng, the site manager, and anh Tâm, the foreman. Notice that Sam calls himself tôi with a peer, and that the foreman replies with dạ and calls himself em, which is how a younger person speaks to someone senior.

The second conversation takes place the next morning. Sam sees a young worker at the slab edge without his harness clipped on. Correcting someone is delicate in Vietnamese, where saying a direct no in front of other people can embarrass them. Sam uses em for the worker and anh for himself, softens the order with nhé and giúp, and thanks him afterwards.

Phrases for acceptance and sign-off

How to practise

Silent reading is how many learners end up knowing the words and still being unintelligible, because tones live in the mouth. Play the site word set in Falling Stars or Pop It and say each word aloud with its tone before you pick the answer, then read the example sentences out loud.

Next, train your ear. Pick an episode from the Vietnamese podcasts, listen to a sentence, write it out, and compare with the transcript. Transcribing shows you the tones and final consonants you hear wrongly. If you want a plan, see the courses, and use the vocabulary test to check where you stand.

For resources beyond WELE, VietnamesePod101 has audio lessons at several levels, and a colleague who will read a drawing note aloud with you for ten minutes a week is worth more than most courses. Documents for local authorities are usually in Vietnamese, so ask your company which terms they expect. When you want a benchmark, the VPT mock test on WELE shows where you are.

If your work is closer to the office than the site, see Vietnamese for IT professionals, or browse all Vietnamese by profession and the engineering page.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to learn enough Vietnamese for a site?

It depends on your starting point and the time you can give, so any single number would be invented. A useful target is smaller than fluency: understand a short instruction, ask a question about a drawing, and give a progress report. That is a few hundred well-chosen words and the five grammar points above.

Northern or Southern pronunciation: which one should I learn?

The one used where you work. Hanoi Vietnamese keeps all six tones distinct, while many Southern speakers merge two of them and pronounce some consonants differently. Vocabulary also differs in places. You can learn from either, but listen to your own crew from the first week.

Do I need to read and write Vietnamese for a site job?

You need to read signs, delivery notes and the notes on drawings, which is a small set of words. Writing is mostly needed for reports and minutes, and many companies write them in two languages. Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet with tone marks, so reading is easier than in many Asian languages once you know the tone marks.

How should I address a worker who is older than me?

Use chú or bác for a man and cô or bác for a woman, and call yourself cháu or tôi. It feels odd at first to call a worker uncle, but it is what a Vietnamese engineer of your age would do, and it is received well.

Is a translation app enough on site?

It is useful for text on a drawing or a delivery note, and it fails in noise, with slang like ly and phân, and with tones. For a safety instruction, do not rely on it. Learn the dozen short phrases you will use ten times a day, and use the app for the rest.

Where to start

Ask your foreman to read you the day's plan aloud once, and write down the words you did not catch. Those words, and the ones in the tables above, are your first list. A round of Falling Stars in the evening keeps the shared words fresh.