Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

Chung cư usually means an apartment building or apartment complex in Vietnamese.

In this sentence, it refers to the building/place, not one specific apartment unit. If you wanted to talk about a single apartment unit, Vietnamese might use other wording depending on context.

So here, Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước means that the apartment building/complex had a power outage and a water outage.

Bị often marks something negative, unwanted, or unfortunate that happens to the subject.

Here, bị mất điện suggests suffering a loss of electricity or being affected by a power outage.

Compare the feeling:

• mất điện = lose power / power goes out
• bị mất điện = be affected by a power outage, with a stronger sense that this is an unwanted situation

So bị adds the idea that this is something bad happening to the apartment building.

Because Vietnamese often avoids repeating words when the meaning is already clear.

So:

• Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

is understood as:

• Chung cư bị mất điện và bị mất nước.

The second bị is omitted because both parts are parallel and the sentence is still perfectly clear.

This is very natural in Vietnamese.

Yes, literally it does.

• mất = lose
• điện = electricity

But as a fixed expression, mất điện means to have a power outage / to lose power.

Similarly:

• mất nước = lose water supply / have a water outage

So even though the literal wording sounds a bit different from natural English, these are very common Vietnamese expressions.

No, not in this sentence.

Vietnamese mất nước can mean different things depending on context:

1. water supply is cut off / no water
2. dehydrated
3. in some contexts, even loss of a country in historical/political language

Here, because it follows chung cư and appears with mất điện, it clearly means the building lost water supply.

Context is very important with this phrase.

Vietnamese often lists parallel problems in a simple A và B structure:

• mất điện = power outage
• mất nước = water outage

So:

• mất điện và mất nước = lost power and water

This is very straightforward coordination with và = and.

There is nothing especially unusual about the word order here:

• subject: Chung cư
• marker of negative event: bị
• problem 1: mất điện
• conjunction: và
• problem 2: mất nước

Sort of, but not exactly.

Bị is sometimes taught as a passive marker, especially in sentences with negative meaning. But it is better to think of it more broadly as marking that the subject is affected by an unwanted event.

So this sentence is not a clean passive in the same way as English was broken by... or was damaged by....

A more natural understanding is:

• The apartment building was affected by a power outage and water outage
• or simply The apartment building lost power and water

So yes, bị overlaps with passive-like meaning, but it is not always best translated with an English passive form.

It may sound a little strange if translated word-for-word into English, but it is completely normal in Vietnamese.

Vietnamese often lets places, buildings, or institutions be the subject of events like this:

• Trường bị mất điện. = The school lost power.
• Khu này bị mất nước. = This area has no water / lost water supply.

So chung cư as the subject is very natural.

Not with exactly the same meaning.

• chung cư = apartment building / apartment complex
• căn hộ = apartment unit / flat

So:

• Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước = the whole building/complex lost power and water
• Căn hộ bị mất điện và mất nước = a particular apartment unit lost power and water

Both are possible, but they refer to different things.

Yes, you could say:

• Chung cư mất điện và mất nước.

This is also understandable and natural in many contexts.

The version with bị emphasizes the idea that the building is affected by an unfortunate situation. Without bị, the sentence can sound a little more neutral and report-like.

So the difference is subtle:

• Chung cư mất điện và mất nước. = the apartment building lost power and water
• Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước. = the apartment building was hit by / affected by power and water outages

Because chung cư here is being used as a general noun phrase, not as one classifier + noun in a counting structure.

Vietnamese classifiers are typically used when you are specifying or counting something:

• một khu chung cư = an apartment complex
• một tòa chung cư = an apartment building
• cái chung cư is generally not the natural choice here

But when speaking more generally or when the noun is functioning like a topic/subject, Vietnamese often does not need a classifier:

• Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

This is very normal.

Usually it suggests a temporary outage, especially because of the expressions:

• mất điện = power outage
• mất nước = water outage / water cut

In everyday usage, people normally understand this as the electricity and water are currently cut off or went out, not that they disappeared permanently.

If needed, context can make the timing clearer:

• sáng nay chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước = this morning the building lost power and water
• đang bị mất điện = is currently without power

Some natural English versions are:

• The apartment building lost power and water.
• The apartment complex had a power outage and a water outage.
• The apartment building had no electricity or running water.
• The apartment building was without electricity and water.

A very literal version, The apartment building was affected by losing electricity and water, is possible but less natural in English.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• Chung cư ≈ choong koo
• bị ≈ bee with a heavy falling tone
• mất ≈ mut with a sharp, clipped tone
• điện ≈ dee-en with a falling tone
• và ≈ vah
• nước ≈ something like nuh-uhk, with a complex vowel and final consonant

Very rough full approximation:

choong koo bee mut dee-en vah mut nuh-uhk

But the tones matter a lot in Vietnamese, so this kind of English spelling is only a rough starting point.