Breakdown of Sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
Questions & Answers about Sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
Sau khi means after (doing something) and is followed by a verb phrase:
- Sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
→ After bathing, I put on a clean blue shirt.
Sau by itself is usually followed by a noun / time expression, not a verb:
- Sau bữa ăn, tôi đi ngủ. → After the meal, I go to sleep.
- Sau đó, tôi đi làm. → After that, I go to work.
So:
- sau khi + verb: after doing X
- sau + noun / time: after X (time / event)
In Vietnamese, tắm by itself already means to bathe / to shower. It is naturally reflexive, so you don’t need to say “myself” or add a noun:
- Tôi tắm. → I shower / I take a bath.
- Sau khi tắm, … → After showering / bathing, …
Adding an object like tắm mình or tắm rửa is possible but not necessary in everyday speech.
Vietnamese usually does not mark tense with separate words the way English does. Time is understood from context or from time expressions like hôm qua (yesterday), mai (tomorrow), etc.
In:
- Sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
the sequence sau khi …, … already shows order in time:
- First: tắm (bathe)
- Then: mặc áo xanh sạch (put on a clean blue shirt)
Depending on context, this sentence can be translated:
- After I shower, I put on a clean blue shirt. (habit)
- After I showered, I put on a clean blue shirt. (past event)
If you really need to make past time explicit, you could add an adverb:
- Hôm qua, sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
Yesterday, after showering, I put on a clean blue shirt.
Here, sau khi tắm is a subordinate clause placed at the beginning of the sentence. In writing, it’s standard and natural to put a comma between that clause and the main clause:
- Sau khi tắm, tôi mặc áo xanh sạch.
If you reverse the order, you usually don’t use a comma:
- Tôi mặc áo xanh sạch sau khi tắm.
(no comma needed)
In casual texting or very informal writing, some people may drop commas, but in careful writing, the comma as shown here is correct and expected.
Áo is a general word for upper-body clothing:
- It can be a shirt, T-shirt, blouse, jacket, etc., depending on context.
To be more specific, you add another word:
- áo sơ mi → dress shirt
- áo thun → T-shirt
- áo khoác → jacket / coat
- áo len → sweater
In tôi mặc áo xanh sạch, in English we often translate áo as shirt because that’s the most natural default, but the Vietnamese itself is vaguer: just “a (clean blue) top.”
By itself, xanh can mean blue or green, depending on context. To be precise, Vietnamese usually adds another word:
- xanh da trời → sky blue
- xanh dương → blue
- xanh lá cây → leaf green (green)
In many contexts, listeners can guess from the situation:
- áo xanh in many cases will be understood as a blue shirt, but it could also be green if that’s what makes sense in the situation.
If you specifically want blue, you can say:
- áo xanh da trời sạch
- áo xanh dương sạch
In Vietnamese, adjectives usually come after the noun, and when there are several adjectives, the natural / common order is:
- More inherent / categorical qualities (e.g., color, shape)
- More temporary or evaluative qualities (e.g., clean/dirty, beautiful/ugly)
So:
- áo xanh sạch = shirt (that is) blue and (currently) clean
Putting sạch before xanh (áo sạch xanh) sounds unnatural or confusing. So color before “clean/dirty” is the normal pattern.
Vietnamese does not use articles like a/an or the. The bare noun áo can correspond to:
- a shirt
- the shirt
- just shirt (in general)
The exact English translation depends on context. If you want to be explicit:
- một cái áo xanh sạch → a clean blue shirt (one)
- cái áo xanh sạch → the clean blue shirt (specific, known)
In everyday speech, speakers often just say áo xanh sạch, and listeners infer a/the from context.
Classifiers like cái and chiếc are used before nouns in certain contexts, especially:
- with numerals: một cái áo, hai chiếc áo
- when specifying a particular item: cái áo này (this shirt)
In tôi mặc áo xanh sạch, the speaker is simply describing what they put on, not counting or pointing out a specific item. In this kind of general action description, it’s common and natural not to use a classifier.
Using a classifier is not wrong, but it adds nuance:
- Tôi mặc một chiếc áo xanh sạch. → I put on a (single, somewhat specific) clean blue shirt.
Yes, Vietnamese often drops pronouns when they are clear from context. So in the right context you could say:
- Sau khi tắm, mặc áo xanh sạch.
and it would be understood as “After (I) shower, (I) put on a clean blue shirt.”
However:
- For learners and in standalone example sentences, keeping tôi is clearer and more standard.
- Omitting the subject can sound more like a note, instruction, or diary-style shorthand, depending on context.
Vietnamese uses different verbs for “wear” depending on the item:
- mặc: for clothes on the body, mainly tops / bottoms
- mặc áo, mặc quần, mặc váy
- mang: for shoes / footwear (and sometimes accessories)
- mang giày, mang dép
- đội: for headwear
- đội mũ, đội nón
- đeo: for accessories you hang on your body
- đeo kính, đeo đồng hồ, đeo túi
So mặc áo xanh sạch is exactly the right choice for “put on / wear a clean blue shirt.”