Tôi sống gần ngân hàng.

Tôi is a neutral, polite way to say I in Vietnamese. It is very safe in many situations, especially when speaking to strangers, in formal contexts, or when you are not sure which pronoun fits best.

However, Vietnamese pronouns depend a lot on age, relationship, and social context. In real life, people often use kinship-style pronouns instead of tôi, such as em, anh, chị, or con.

So tôi is correct here, but it is not the only possible word for I.

Both can work, but they are not exactly the same.

• sống = to live
• ở = to stay / to be at / to live in a place

In everyday speech, if you simply mean where you live, ở is often very common:

• Tôi ở gần ngân hàng.

Using sống is still correct and natural. It can sound a little more like reside or live one’s life in a place. So the given sentence is fine, but a learner will also hear Tôi ở gần ngân hàng very often.

Vietnamese usually follows a pattern like:

subject + verb + place/location phrase

So in this sentence:

• Tôi = subject
• sống = verb
• gần ngân hàng = location phrase

That is why gần comes after sống. This matches the English pattern I live near the bank, where near the bank also comes after the verb.

No, you do not have to use ở here.

These are all possible:

• Tôi sống gần ngân hàng.
• Tôi sống ở gần ngân hàng.
• Tôi ở gần ngân hàng.

The first one is already complete and natural. Adding ở can make the location feel a little more explicit, but it is often omitted.

In everyday speech, Tôi ở gần ngân hàng is especially common.

Vietnamese does not use articles the way English does. There is no mandatory word that directly matches a or the in every sentence.

So ngân hàng can mean:

• a bank
• the bank

The exact meaning depends on context.

If you want to be more specific, Vietnamese can add other words, for example:

• một ngân hàng = a bank
• ngân hàng đó = that bank / the bank

But in the original sentence, just ngân hàng is completely normal.

Yes, ngân hàng normally means a bank as a financial institution.

It does not usually mean the bank of a river. For that idea, Vietnamese would use something like:

• bờ sông = riverbank
• bờ = shore/bank/edge

So in Tôi sống gần ngân hàng, the meaning is clearly financial bank.

By itself, it most naturally means I live near the bank.

Vietnamese verbs do not change form for tense the way English verbs do. The verb sống stays the same. Time is usually understood from context or shown with extra words.

For example:

• Tôi đang sống gần ngân hàng. = I am living near the bank.
• Tôi đã sống gần ngân hàng. = I lived / have lived near the bank.
• Tôi sẽ sống gần ngân hàng. = I will live near the bank.

So the original sentence is best understood as a present or general fact.

For a learner, it is fine to think of gần as working like near.

In Vietnamese grammar, words like gần can behave a bit differently from English prepositions. It is often described as an adjective or a location-related word rather than a pure preposition in the English sense.

But practically speaking, in this sentence you can safely understand:

• gần ngân hàng = near the bank

So you do not need to overthink the label at first.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• tôi ≈ toy
• sống ≈ sohng with a rising tone
• gần ≈ guhn with a low/falling tone
• ngân hàng ≈ nguhn hahng

A few helpful notes:

• tôi has a diphthong somewhat like English toy, though not exactly the same.
• sống ends with ng, like the end of song.
• gần has the vowel â, which is short and central, not like a strong English a.
• ngân starts with ng, which English speakers are used to only at the end of words, so that may take practice.
• Pronunciation varies by region, especially between northern and southern Vietnamese.

To make it negative, add không before the verb:

• Tôi không sống gần ngân hàng. = I do not live near the bank.

To ask a yes-no question, common options are:

• Bạn sống gần ngân hàng à? = Do you live near the bank?
• Bạn có sống gần ngân hàng không? = Do you live near the bank?

If you keep tôi, you can also ask for confirmation about yourself in a special context, but normally the subject would change when asking someone else.