Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

The apartment building has lost power and water.

Breakdown of Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

• và: and
• chung cư: the apartment building
• bị: (passive marker)
• mất điện: to lose power

Questions & Answers about Chung cư bị mất điện và mất nước.

What does chung cư mean here?

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.

What does bị do in this sentence?

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.

Why is there only one bị even though there are two problems: mất điện and mất nước?

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.