Con chó đuổi con mèo.

Con is a common classifier for animals in Vietnamese. In con chó and con mèo, it helps mark chó as dog and mèo as cat in the way Vietnamese normally refers to animals.

So:

• con chó = dog / the dog / a dog
• con mèo = cat / the cat / a cat

Classifiers are very important in Vietnamese, and con is one of the most common ones for living creatures, especially animals.

Yes, you sometimes can, but it changes the feel.

• Con chó đuổi con mèo sounds like a normal full sentence about specific animals.
• Chó đuổi mèo sounds more general, more compressed, or more like a headline, proverb, or broad statement such as dogs chase cats.

In everyday speech, Vietnamese often keeps con with animals when speaking about actual individual animals.

The word order is:

Subject + Verb + Object

So here:

• Con chó = subject
• đuổi = verb
• con mèo = object

That is very similar to English:

• The dog
  • chases/is chasing
    • the cat

So this sentence is structurally quite straightforward for an English speaker.

Vietnamese usually does not use articles like English the or a/an.

That means con chó can mean:

• a dog
• the dog
• sometimes just dog, depending on context

And con mèo can mean:

• a cat
• the cat

Context tells you which one is meant. If the meaning has already been provided to you as The dog is chasing the cat, that is a perfectly natural interpretation.

By itself, đuổi does not show tense the way English verbs do. Vietnamese verbs usually stay the same, and time is understood from context or from extra words.

So Con chó đuổi con mèo can mean:

• The dog chases the cat
• The dog is chasing the cat

depending on the situation.

If you want to make time clearer, Vietnamese can add words like:

• đã for past
• đang for ongoing action
• sẽ for future

For example:

• Con chó đang đuổi con mèo. = The dog is chasing the cat.
• Con chó đã đuổi con mèo. = The dog chased the cat.
• Con chó sẽ đuổi con mèo. = The dog will chase the cat.

Đuổi means to chase. It usually gives the idea of going after something or someone, often trying to catch it or drive it away.

Depending on context, it can also relate to driving away or pursuing someone/something.

In this sentence, the most natural meaning is simply to chase.

A rough guide is:

• con — like gone with a k sound at the start, but shorter
• chó — roughly like chaw with a rising tone
• đuổi — somewhat like doo-ee compressed together, with a dipping/rising contour depending on dialect
• mèo — roughly like meh-oh, often blending into one smooth syllable-like unit

A few important tone notes:

• chó has the sắc tone, a rising tone
• mèo has the huyền tone, a low falling tone
• con is level
• đuổi has a more complex tone and is often one of the harder words for learners

If you are a beginner, it is best to learn pronunciation with audio, because Vietnamese tones and vowel quality are hard to capture well with English spelling.

No. It is two words:

• con = classifier
• chó = dog

Likewise:

• con mèo = classifier + cat

Even though they work together as a noun phrase, they are not one single word.

In Vietnamese, the noun before the verb is usually the doer of the action, and the noun after the verb is usually the receiver of the action.

So in:

• Con chó đuổi con mèo

the dog is doing the chasing, and the cat is being chased.

If you reversed the nouns:

• Con mèo đuổi con chó

then the cat would be chasing the dog.

Usually, Con chó đuổi con mèo sounds more like a specific event involving a dog and a cat.

If you want a more general statement, Vietnamese often drops the classifiers:

• Chó đuổi mèo. = Dogs chase cats / Dogs chase cats as a general idea

So the version with con often feels more concrete and specific.

You can add time markers before the verb:

• Con chó đã đuổi con mèo. = The dog chased the cat.
• Con chó đang đuổi con mèo. = The dog is chasing the cat.
• Con chó sẽ đuổi con mèo. = The dog will chase the cat.

These markers are very common in Vietnamese because the verb itself usually does not change form.

Yes. Con chó đuổi con mèo. is a complete, natural, grammatical sentence.

It is simple but very typical Vietnamese:

• noun phrase
• verb
• noun phrase

It is exactly the kind of sentence learners often start with because the structure is clear and common.