Tôi nâng ghế.

• Tôi = I
• nâng = lift / raise
• ghế = chair

The basic word order is Subject + Verb + Object, so it is literally:

I + lift + chair

That is the normal Vietnamese sentence pattern here.

Vietnamese usually does not use articles like English a / an / the.

So ghế can mean:

• a chair
• the chair
• sometimes just chair in a general sense

The exact meaning depends on context. If you want to be more specific, Vietnamese often uses words like:

• cái ghế này = this chair
• cái ghế đó = that chair

So Tôi nâng ghế is normal in the sense that Vietnamese does not need an article.

That is a very common question. With many everyday objects, Vietnamese often uses a classifier such as cái:

• Tôi nâng cái ghế.

This often sounds more natural when you mean a particular chair or one chair.

However, classifiers are sometimes omitted, especially in:

• short example sentences
• dictionary-style sentences
• simple teaching materials
• contexts where the object is already clear

So Tôi nâng ghế is grammatical, but in everyday speech many speakers would also say Tôi nâng cái ghế.

No. Vietnamese verbs do not conjugate the way English verbs do.

So nâng stays nâng with different subjects:

• Tôi nâng ghế = I lift the chair
• Anh ấy nâng ghế = He lifts the chair
• Họ nâng ghế = They lift the chair

The verb does not change for:

• person
• number
• tense

This is one of the big differences between Vietnamese and English.

Vietnamese usually shows time through context, time words, or aspect markers, not by changing the verb.

So Tôi nâng ghế by itself does not clearly mark tense. Depending on context, it could be understood as something like:

• I lift the chair
• I am lifting the chair
• I lifted the chair
• I will lift the chair

If you want to be clearer, you can add words such as:

• Tôi đang nâng cái ghế. = I am lifting the chair.
• Hôm qua tôi nâng cái ghế. = Yesterday I lifted the chair.
• Tôi sẽ nâng cái ghế. = I will lift the chair.

Nâng is understandable and correct, but it is not the only choice.

Depending on the situation, Vietnamese speakers may also say:

• nhấc = lift/pick up
• bê = carry/lift something fairly bulky, often with the hands

For a physical chair, these may sound very natural:

• Tôi nhấc cái ghế lên.
• Tôi bê cái ghế lên.

So nâng has a sense of raising/lifting upward, but for everyday speech about moving a chair, nhấc or bê may sometimes sound more idiomatic.

Lên often adds the idea of upward movement or the result up.

So:

• Tôi nâng ghế = I lift the chair
• Tôi nâng cái ghế lên = I lift the chair up

In English, lift already suggests upward movement, but Vietnamese often likes to make that direction explicit with lên.

Because of that, Tôi nâng cái ghế lên can sound more complete and natural in everyday speech.

In Vietnamese, not every mark is a tone mark. Some marks change the vowel quality, and some show the tone.

Here is the breakdown:

• ô in tôi: changes the vowel sound; it is not a tone mark
• â in nâng: changes the vowel sound; it is not a tone mark
• ê in ghế: changes the vowel sound
• the acute accent on ế: this is a tone mark, showing the sắc tone

So learners should remember:

• some marks tell you which vowel it is
• some marks tell you which tone it has
• sometimes a letter has both kinds of marking

A rough guide is:

• tôi ≈ toy with a level tone
• nâng ≈ something like nuhng with a level tone
• ghế ≈ geh with a rising tone

A few important notes:

• gh is a hard g sound before e/ê/i
• ghế has a rising tone because of the acute accent
• the vowel in nâng does not match any exact English vowel
• pronunciation differs somewhat by dialect

A simple tone pattern for the whole sentence is:

level – level – rising

Yes. Ghế can mean:

• chair
• seat

In other contexts it can even refer more abstractly to a position or post, depending on the sentence.

But in Tôi nâng ghế, the normal interpretation is just the physical object: chair.

Not always. Tôi is a neutral, fairly safe way to say I, and it is very common in textbooks.

But real Vietnamese often uses different pronouns depending on:

• age
• relationship
• social situation
• politeness level

For example, a speaker might say:

• em
• anh
• chị
• con
• cháu

instead of tôi, depending on who they are talking to.

So tôi is a good default learning form, but it is not the only Vietnamese word for I.