Họ đến các cửa hàng.

Họ means they.

A few useful notes:

• It refers to people, not usually things.
• It is gender-neutral: it does not tell you whether the group is male, female, or mixed.
• It is fairly neutral/formal. In real conversation, Vietnamese often uses kinship-style pronouns instead of họ, depending on who the people are.

Because họ is just third-person plural and does not mark gender.

English learners are often used to pronouns carrying information like he / she / they, but Vietnamese often leaves out that kind of detail unless it matters. If you need gender or relationship information, Vietnamese usually shows it with other pronouns or context, not with họ itself.

Đến is a verb meaning to come, to arrive, or to reach a place.

Depending on context, English may translate it as:

• come to
• arrive at
• sometimes even go to

That is because Vietnamese motion verbs do not always match English motion verbs one-for-one. The exact English choice depends on viewpoint and context.

Because đến already includes the idea of movement to a place.

So Vietnamese can say:

• đến trường = come/go to school
• đến nhà = come/go home / come to the house
• đến các cửa hàng = come/go to the stores

In this pattern, the destination comes directly after đến.

Các is a plural marker placed before a noun.

So:

• cửa hàng = store / shop
• các cửa hàng = stores / the stores

A helpful nuance: các often sounds like a specific or identifiable plural set, somewhat like the ...s in English, though it does not match English articles perfectly.

Yes, often you can, but the nuance changes.

Very roughly:

• các cửa hàng = the stores / the various stores / the stores as a set
• những cửa hàng = some stores / stores / a number of stores

A common learner-friendly distinction is:

• các = more definite, more set-like, sometimes more complete
• những = plural, often less definite

But in real usage, there is overlap, so context matters.

Because classifiers are not required in every noun phrase in Vietnamese.

English speakers often learn early that Vietnamese uses classifiers, but they are mainly common in patterns like:

• numbers: ba cái bàn
• demonstratives: cái bàn này
• certain specific noun phrases

After plural markers like các or những, a plain noun is very normal:

• các cửa hàng
• những người
• các thành phố

So các cửa hàng is completely natural.

It is written as two syllables, but it functions as one lexical item meaning shop/store.

Vietnamese spelling often separates syllables with spaces, so beginners sometimes think each syllable is a separate word in the English sense. But many common Vietnamese “words” are actually multi-syllable units written with spaces.

So it is best to learn cửa hàng as a single vocabulary item meaning store/shop.

By itself, it is not marked for tense.

Vietnamese verbs do not change form the way English verbs do. Time is usually understood from:

• context
• time words
• aspect markers such as:
  • đã for past/completed
  • đang for ongoing
  • sẽ for future

For example:

• Họ đã đến các cửa hàng. = They came / arrived at the stores.
• Họ đang đến các cửa hàng. = They are coming to the stores.
• Họ sẽ đến các cửa hàng. = They will come to the stores.

Without such markers, the sentence is neutral and context decides.

Yes, it is fairly similar here.

The structure is:

• Họ = subject
• đến = verb
• các cửa hàng = destination/place

So the pattern is basically:

Subject + Verb + Place

That makes this sentence relatively straightforward for English speakers.

Yes, sometimes.

If you say Họ đến cửa hàng, it can sound like:

• they come/go to the store
• they come/go to a shop
• a more general statement, depending on context

Vietnamese often leaves number unmarked when it is obvious or unimportant. Adding các makes the plural meaning clearer.

So:

• Họ đến cửa hàng = number not strongly emphasized
• Họ đến các cửa hàng = clearly plural

In Vietnamese, đến focuses more on arrival at a destination than on the English-style contrast between come and go.

So in translation, it may become:

• come to
• go to
• arrive at

depending on whose point of view the English sentence is using.

That is why a literal word-for-word English match is not always the best way to understand đến. It is better to think of it as a motion verb toward/at a destination.