Questions & Answers about Tỉnh ở gần biển.
Here, tỉnh means province.
Vietnamese tỉnh can also mean awake / conscious / sober, so learners often notice the ambiguity. In this sentence, though, ở gần biển is describing a location, so tỉnh is naturally understood as the noun province.
Not necessarily. It is capitalized here simply because it is the first word of the sentence.
If you were naming a specific province, you might see something like tỉnh Quảng Ninh or Tỉnh Quảng Ninh depending on formatting. But tỉnh by itself is just a common noun meaning province.
Vietnamese does not always use a separate word equivalent to English is.
In this sentence, ở is doing the main job: it means something like to be at / to be located at. So Tỉnh ở gần biển literally works like:
- Tỉnh = province
- ở = is located / is at
- gần biển = near the sea
So the sentence already has what English would express with is.