Tôi từng sống ở thành phố.

Từng shows that something happened in the past as part of someone’s experience. In this sentence, it gives the idea of once, at one time, or used to.

So Tôi từng sống ở thành phố suggests that living in the city was true before, but it may not be true now.

In Vietnamese, words like từng, đã, đang, and sẽ usually come before the main verb.

So the pattern here is:

• Tôi = I
• từng = past experience / once / used to
• sống = live
• ở thành phố = in the city

That is why từng comes before sống, not after it.

They are both related to the past, but they are not the same.

• đã mainly marks that something happened in the past
• từng emphasizes past experience or that something was true before

Compare:

• Tôi đã sống ở thành phố. = I lived in the city.
• Tôi từng sống ở thành phố. = I once lived in the city / I used to live in the city.

You can also hear đã từng, which combines both ideas:

• Tôi đã từng sống ở thành phố.

This is very natural and adds extra emphasis to the past experience.

It often suggests that, yes. Từng usually implies that this was true before and is no longer the current situation, or at least that the speaker is focusing on it as a past experience.

Still, context matters. The sentence strongly points to the past, but only the wider conversation can confirm whether the speaker has moved away or is just talking about one period of life.

Ở is used as a preposition meaning in, at, or to stay/live at, depending on the sentence.

In sống ở thành phố, the verb is sống = to live, and ở thành phố tells you the location: in the city.

So:

• sống = live
• ở thành phố = in the city

Together: live in the city

Yes, but it does not mean exactly the same thing.

• Tôi từng sống ở thành phố = I once lived in the city
• Tôi từng ở thành phố = I was/stayed in the city before

Without sống, the sentence is less specifically about residence. It could mean you were there for some time, not necessarily that you lived there as your home.

If you want to clearly express lived, keeping sống is better.

Vietnamese does not use articles like a or the the way English does, so thành phố can be understood from context.

Depending on the situation, it might mean:

• the city
• a city
• urban areas / city life

In this sentence, English often translates it naturally as the city, but Vietnamese itself does not mark that distinction directly.

Vietnamese handles this differently from English.

• ở covers the idea of in/at
• thành phố is the noun city
• there is no separate word corresponding exactly to English the

So ở thành phố naturally means in the city or in a city, depending on context.

Here, sống is a verb meaning to live in the sense of residing somewhere.

Vietnamese verbs do not change form the way English verbs do. So sống stays the same whether the subject is I, you, or they, and whether the time is past, present, or future. Time is shown through context or words like từng, đã, đang, and sẽ.

The structure is:

• Tôi = subject
• từng = past-experience marker
• sống = main verb
• ở thành phố = location phrase

So the pattern is:

Subject + time/aspect marker + verb + location

This is a very common Vietnamese sentence pattern.

It is possible in some contexts, but ở thành phố is more natural here.

• ở is the normal choice for saying where someone lives
• trong means inside and gives a stronger sense of being physically inside something

So for ordinary statements like live in the city, Vietnamese usually prefers sống ở thành phố.

A learner may want to pay attention to the tones:

• Tôi — level-ish tone in the Southern accent, dipping/rising in the Northern accent depending on pronunciation habits
• từng — low falling tone with a glottal quality
• sống — rising, broken tone
• ở — rising, broken tone
• thành — low tone
• phố — sharp rising tone

Also note:

• tôi sounds roughly like toy but shorter and cleaner
• sống and ở both have tones that English speakers often find difficult
• phố has the ph spelling, but it is pronounced like f, so phố begins with an f sound

Tone accuracy matters because changing the tone can change the word.

A few natural variations are:

• Tôi đã từng sống ở thành phố.
• Trước đây tôi sống ở thành phố.
• Tôi từng sống trong thành phố lớn. if you mean a big city

The original sentence is already natural, but Vietnamese often adds extra context words like đã or trước đây when the speaker wants the past meaning to be especially clear.