Bãi cỏ ở trong công viên.

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Breakdown of Bãi cỏ ở trong công viên.

• trong: in (enclosed by something)
• công viên: the park
• bãi cỏ: the lawn

Questions & Answers about Bãi cỏ ở trong công viên.

What does bãi cỏ mean exactly? Is it just grass?

Not exactly. cỏ means grass, but bãi cỏ means a grassy area, lawn, or patch/expanse of grass.

So in this sentence, bãi cỏ is a noun phrase, not just the material grass in general.

• cỏ = grass
• bãi cỏ = lawn / grassy area

The word bãi often gives the idea of an area or stretch of something.

Why is ở in the sentence? Is it like the verb to be?

Here, ở works as a location verb meaning to be located at/in.

Vietnamese does not use to be in exactly the same way English does. In a sentence like this, ở is what links the subject to its location:

• Bãi cỏ = the lawn / grassy area
• ở trong công viên = is in the park

So ở is very important here because it tells you that the sentence is about location.

Why do we have both ở and trong? Don’t they both mean in?

They do overlap in meaning, but they have different jobs.

• ở = indicates location, roughly to be at/in
• trong = inside / in

So ở trong công viên is literally something like is located inside the park.

In natural English, we usually just say is in the park, but Vietnamese often uses both parts together.