The demonstrative ấy points to a referent outside the speaker’s immediate “here and now,” especially one recoverable from prior discourse or remembered experience. In modern prose, ngày ấy “in those days,” con người ấy “that person,” and quyết định ấy “that decision” often create a reflective, cohesive, or deliberately distanced tone. Like other Vietnamese demonstratives, ấy normally follows the complete noun phrase.
Calling ấy simply “literary,” however, would be misleading. It is fully ordinary inside third-person forms such as anh ấy “he” and cô ấy “she,” and temporal phrases such as lúc ấy occur well beyond literature. Post-nominal ấy also occurs in conversation when the speaker treats a referent as shared knowledge, though preference for it rather than đó varies by speaker, region, and construction. This page develops anaphoric and stylistic ấy; interrogative and indefinite nào belongs on Nào inside Noun Phrases.
Form and Anaphoric Meaning
The noun-phrase pattern is familiar:
(plural marker) + (number + classifier) + noun + modifiers + ấy
Quyển sách ấy đã thay đổi cách tôi nhìn về lịch sử.
That book changed the way I viewed history.
Những người ấy không còn sống ở làng nữa.
Those people no longer live in the village.
Hai bức thư ấy được viết cách nhau gần hai mươi năm.
Those two letters were written nearly twenty years apart.
In each example, the addressee or reader is expected to retrieve the referent from context. Ấy does not primarily invite a fresh physical pointing gesture. That makes it particularly useful in sustained narrative, where an author must keep previously introduced people, objects, and periods identifiable.
How Ấy Differs from Này, Đó, and Kia
| Form | Typical anchor | Likely register/effect |
|---|---|---|
| này | Near, current, being presented | Neutral in speech and writing |
| đó | Pointed out, mutually known, or just mentioned | Neutral and very common in conversation |
| kia | Visibly remote or contrastively “over there” | Neutral; strongly deictic or contrastive |
| ấy | Textually, historically, or emotionally recalled | Often formal, narrative, or literary as a free demonstrative |
The boundaries are not absolute. A journalist may alternate đó and ấy for cohesion, while a speaker can say hồi ấy “back then” in an ordinary reminiscence. In conversational Cái quán mình nói hôm qua ấy đóng cửa rồi “That café we talked about yesterday has closed,” ấy cues the listener to recover shared knowledge without sounding literary. The important contrast is perspective: đó commonly points from the present conversation to an accessible matter; ấy can either cue shared recognition in speech or place a referent inside a narrated world.
Tôi nhớ ngày ấy trời mưa suốt từ sáng đến tối.
I remember that day; it rained continuously from morning until evening.
Chuyện đó để mai nói tiếp nhé.
Let’s continue talking about that matter tomorrow.
Ngôi nhà kia là thư viện cũ của thị trấn.
That building over there is the town’s old library.
The first sentence invites recollection; the second manages a current conversational topic; the third points through visible space. Replacing every form with ấy would erase those pragmatic differences.
Narrative Time and Cohesion
Temporal nouns are especially compatible with ấy: ngày ấy “that day/those days,” năm ấy “that year,” lúc ấy “at that time,” and (literary) thuở ấy “in those days.” These phrases transport the viewpoint to a previously established period.
Năm ấy, nước lũ dâng cao đến tận bậc cửa đình.
That year, the floodwater rose all the way to the steps of the communal house.
Thuở ấy, con đường qua núi còn hẹp và rất khó đi.
In those days, the road through the mountains was still narrow and very difficult to travel.
Thuở ấy is literary/elevated and natural in memoir, historical narration, and storytelling; it would sound ceremonious in a routine office conversation. Lúc ấy and hồi ấy are much less marked, with hồi ấy particularly natural in reminiscence.
In formal exposition, nói trên “aforementioned” or nêu trên may be more precise than ấy when legal reference must be unambiguous. Văn bản ấy is elegant anaphora, but a contract may prefer văn bản nêu trên “the document stated above.” Register is a choice serving precision, not a ladder on which ấy is automatically “better.”
Everyday Personal Reference
In anh ấy, chị ấy, cô ấy, chú ấy, and similar forms, ấy helps turn a kinship/address term into third-person reference. These combinations are everyday standard Vietnamese, not inherently formal or literary.
Cô ấy bảo chiều nay sẽ gọi lại.
She said she would call back this afternoon.
Anh ấy làm cùng phòng với tôi.
He works in the same office as me.
Whether a particular term is respectful, intimate, or inappropriate depends on age, relationship, and context. Ông ấy can mean “that man/he” and may sound neutral or distancing; vị ấy is formal/respectful; người ấy often carries a reflective or romantic tone, especially in writing and song titles. Do not infer the person’s actual gender or relationship from English alone; Vietnamese address-term choice encodes social positioning.
Ấy across Nominal Constructions
Compare how Vietnamese reference is assembled:
| Phrase | Contribution |
|---|---|
| một con mèo | one counted animal |
| hai quyển sách | two counted volumes |
| những người này | a current/proximal plural set |
| nhà của tôi | a house identified by possession |
| một bát cơm | one container-sized portion |
| hai quyển sách ấy | two volumes retrieved from the narrative context |
Ấy follows a classifier phrase (hai quyển sách ấy), a plural expression (những người ấy), or a modified noun (ngôi nhà cũ ấy). It does not replace the classifier required by a numeral. Nor does it serve as a general equivalent of English the. A unique or already accessible noun may remain bare.
Possession and anaphora may coexist: ngôi nhà của ông ấy means “his house/the house belonging to that man,” where ấy belongs to the possessor ông ấy. By contrast, ngôi nhà ấy của ông foregrounds “that house” and then identifies its owner; it is marked and context-dependent. Word order tells the reader which constituent ấy helps retrieve.
A Short Narrative Contrast
Ngày ấy, nhà của tôi chỉ là một căn nhà gỗ nhỏ. Trước sân có một cây khế. Cây khế ấy mùa nào cũng sai quả, nên trẻ con trong xóm thường sang chơi.
In those days, my house was only a small wooden house. There was a starfruit tree in the yard. That starfruit tree bore abundant fruit every season, so neighborhood children often came over.
The first ngày ấy establishes remembered time. Một cây khế then introduces a new tree. In the next sentence, cây khế ấy retrieves that exact tree and gives the paragraph a crafted narrative flow. In spontaneous conversation, cây khế đó would also be natural but would sound more like direct conversational pointing back.
Common Mistakes
Putting ấy before the noun
❌ Ấy quyển sách rất khó tìm.
Incorrect — ấy is not placed before the noun like English that.
✅ Quyển sách ấy rất khó tìm.
That book is very hard to find.
Treating ấy as an obligatory definite article
❌ Ấy Mặt Trăng quay quanh ấy Trái Đất.
Incorrect — ấy cannot be inserted as English the before unique nouns.
✅ Mặt Trăng quay quanh Trái Đất.
The Moon revolves around the Earth.
Uniqueness supplies reference; no demonstrative is needed.
Dropping the classifier after a number
❌ Hai sách ấy đều đã thất lạc.
Incorrect in neutral standard usage — counted books require a classifier.
✅ Hai quyển sách ấy đều đã thất lạc.
Both of those books have been lost.
Adding plural markers where the number already counts
❌ Những hai bức thư ấy được cất trong tủ.
Incorrect — những does not precede an exact numeral in this pattern.
✅ Hai bức thư ấy được cất trong tủ.
Those two letters were kept in the cabinet.
Key Takeaways
- Free demonstrative ấy commonly retrieves a person, object, or period from a narrative or shared memory.
- Place it after the complete noun phrase: hai bức thư ấy, những người ấy.
- Narrative ấy is often formal or literary, but anh ấy, cô ấy, and lúc ấy are ordinary modern forms.
- Choose đó for live conversational reference and kia for visible remoteness when those perspectives matter.
Mastery lies not in replacing every “that” with ấy, but in hearing its viewpoint: an entity is being retrieved from a shared text, memory, or socially framed third-person perspective.
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