Word
Lan mua cả áo và thẻ.
Meaning
Lan buys both the shirt and the card.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Lan mua cả áo và thẻ.
What does cả ... và ... mean in this sentence?
In this pattern, cả X và Y means both X and Y.
So Lan mua cả áo và thẻ means that Lan bought not just one of those things, but both of them.
A useful thing to remember is that cả can have other meanings in other contexts, but with và linking two items, it commonly means both.
Why is cả placed before áo and not before both nouns?
In Vietnamese, the structure is normally:
cả + noun 1 + và + noun 2
So cả introduces the whole pair. It does not need to appear twice.
That is why cả áo và thẻ naturally means both clothes/shirt(s) and card(s).
This is similar to how English uses one word, both, before a pair:
- both X and Y
not:
- both X and both Y
Is áo singular or plural here?