Họ cướp ngân hàng.

In this sentence, họ means they.

A few useful notes:

• họ is a third-person plural pronoun
• It can mean they or them, depending on its role in the sentence
• Here it comes before the verb, so it is the subject: They robbed / are robbing / rob a bank

Be careful: họ can also mean surname / family name in other contexts, but that is not what it means here.

Vietnamese usually does not use articles like a, an, and the the way English does.

So:

• ngân hàng can mean a bank, the bank, or just bank
• the exact meaning depends on context

In Họ cướp ngân hàng, English will often translate it as They robbed the bank or They rob banks / a bank, depending on the situation.

If Vietnamese needs to be more specific, it often uses context, demonstratives, or other wording rather than a direct article system like English.

By itself, this sentence does not clearly mark tense.

Vietnamese verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do. So cướp stays cướp whether the action is past, present, or future. The time is usually understood from:

• context
• time words
• tense/aspect markers

For example:

• Họ đã cướp ngân hàng. = They robbed the bank.
• Họ đang cướp ngân hàng. = They are robbing the bank.
• Họ sẽ cướp ngân hàng. = They will rob the bank.

Without those markers, Họ cướp ngân hàng is more neutral and context-dependent.

No. Vietnamese verbs do not conjugate for person or number.

So the verb cướp stays the same with any subject:

• Tôi cướp ngân hàng
• Anh cướp ngân hàng
• Họ cướp ngân hàng

That is very different from English, where verbs can change, such as I rob vs she robs.

In Vietnamese, the subject changes, but the verb itself usually does not.

Yes, in this sentence the basic word order is the same as English:

• Họ = subject
• cướp = verb
• ngân hàng = object

So it follows:

Subject + Verb + Object

That makes this sentence structurally quite straightforward for an English speaker.

cướp usually means to rob, to seize by force, or to snatch.

In cướp ngân hàng, it means to rob a bank.

This is important because English distinguishes between rob and steal:

• rob usually takes a person or place: rob a bank, rob someone
• steal usually takes the thing taken: steal money

Vietnamese cướp can cover forceful taking more broadly, so the best English translation depends on the object.

Here, since the object is ngân hàng (bank), rob is the natural translation.

No, not in normal usage.

Even though a learner might try to map words one-for-one, cướp ngân hàng is understood as rob a bank, not steal a bank.

That is because with places or institutions like ngân hàng, the action is interpreted as a robbery targeting that place.

So this phrase is natural and idiomatic.

Yes, ngân hàng is a two-part compound noun.

As a fixed expression, it means bank.

Vietnamese often forms nouns this way, using compounds rather than a single indivisible word. In practice, the safest thing for a learner is to remember ngân hàng as one vocabulary item meaning bank.

Even if the parts may have meanings in other contexts, you do not need to analyze them every time. In this sentence, just treat ngân hàng as the normal word for bank.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• Họ ≈ haw with a heavy, low tone
• cướp ≈ something like koo-uhp said quickly, with a rising tone
• ngân hàng ≈ nguhn hahng

A few pronunciation points:

• họ has the nặng tone, which is low and clipped
• cướp has the sắc tone, a rising tone
• hàng has the huyền tone, a low falling tone
• the ng sound at the start of ngân is like the final sound in English sing, but here it comes at the beginning of the syllable

This is one of those sentences where tones matter a lot, so it helps to learn the words together with their tones, not just the letters.

No. họ is a common neutral way to say they, but Vietnamese often uses kinship terms or other pronouns depending on who the people are.

For example, in real conversation, speakers may say things like:

• tụi nó
• bọn họ
• mấy người đó

These can differ in tone, politeness, and nuance.

But for a simple neutral sentence, họ is perfectly normal.

Yes, it could, depending on context.

Because Vietnamese does not mark:

• tense the same way English does
• singular/plural on nouns the same way English does
• articles like a/the

Họ cướp ngân hàng could be understood in different ways, such as:

• They robbed the bank
• They rob a bank
• They rob banks

Context usually tells you which meaning is intended.

If the speaker wants to make it clearly plural or habitual, they can add more wording.

A very common way is to add đã before the verb:

• Họ đã cướp ngân hàng.

That makes the action clearly past or completed in many contexts.

Other words can also help, such as time expressions:

• Hôm qua, họ cướp ngân hàng. = Yesterday, they robbed the bank.

Vietnamese often relies on these kinds of markers instead of changing the verb form itself.

It is grammatically natural, but it also sounds like a simple example sentence because it is short and context-free.

In real life, a speaker might say something more specific, such as:

• Họ đã cướp một ngân hàng ở trung tâm thành phố.
• Bọn họ đang cướp ngân hàng.
• Hai người đó vừa cướp ngân hàng.

So Họ cướp ngân hàng is correct and understandable, but in real conversation people often add tense markers, time words, or more detail.