tôi

Etymology 1
Related to 🇨🇬 (whence 🇨🇬). Cognate with 🇨🇬. See also Central-Southern form.

“Slave; servant” > “I”.

The development of first-person pronoun from humble nouns such as “slave; servant” is a pan-Sprachbund phenomenon in the Southeast and East Asian region. Per Nguyen (2000), the pronominal use of this word was not attested in poems by and  in the 15th–16th centuries, and was postulated to have appeared at the end of the 16th or the beginning of the 17th century. Its introduction as a humble first-person pronoun posed as a disturbance to the preexisting – system: it resulted in an asymmetry with an empty second-person addressee slot corresponding to the humble (see the table below), and led to the use of an appropriate noun, usually a kinship term or status term, to respectfully address the other party, precipitating the now-widespread use of kinship terms as personal pronouns in Vietnamese.


 * {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

! !! First person !! Second person !! Third person ! Horizontal pronouns (no social hierarchy) ! Vertical pronouns (with social hierarchy)
 * }
 * }

For similar grammaticalizations of pronouns, compare, and in other languages, compare:

Noun

 * 1)  slave; domestic servant
 * 2)  servant of a monarch
 * 3) * 16th century, Nguyễn Thế Nghi's (attributed) Tân biên Truyền kỳ mạn lục tăng bổ giải âm tập chú (新編傳奇漫錄增補解音集註), /translation of  ("Casual Record of Transmitted Strange-Tales") by.
 * "vi"
 * 1) * 16th century, Nguyễn Thế Nghi's (attributed) Tân biên Truyền kỳ mạn lục tăng bổ giải âm tập chú (新編傳奇漫錄增補解音集註), /translation of  ("Casual Record of Transmitted Strange-Tales") by.
 * "vi"
 * 1) * 16th century, Nguyễn Thế Nghi's (attributed) Tân biên Truyền kỳ mạn lục tăng bổ giải âm tập chú (新編傳奇漫錄增補解音集註), /translation of  ("Casual Record of Transmitted Strange-Tales") by.
 * "vi"

- 碎庭臣𪢍𤽗立言蒸𣦛


 * 1) * Đạo đức và luân lí Đông Tây [Eastern and Western Ideas on Morality and Ethics]:

Pronoun

 * 1)  I/me
 * 2)  I/me
 * 3)  I/me
 * 4)  I/me
 * 1)  I/me
 * 2)  I/me
 * 1)  I/me
 * 2)  I/me
 * 1)  I/me
 * 1)  I/me
 * 1)  I/me

Usage notes
Tôi is a generic way to refer to oneself; however, Vietnamese speakers usually use a complex system of kinship terms to address each other. For example, anh is used to address an older brother, a husband, or a man slightly older than the speaker. The Wikipedia article on Vietnamese pronouns provides a detailed look at these terms. Because kinship terms require knowledge of the audience's age, gender and social status in relation to the speaker, it is not always practical to refer to someone using these pronouns; instead, the speaker can employ generic words such as tôi and ta, but note that these are considered stiff. Alternatively, the speaker may simply use his or her name (and that of the audience) when conversing.

Note also that, although tôi always refers to the speaker, kinship terms variously refer to the speaker or the audience, depending on context.

Synonyms
See the usage note above for details on how to use these words, most of which are not interchangeable:

Coordinate terms
See the usage note above for details on how to use these words, most of which are not interchangeable:

Etymology 2
.

Verb

 * 1) to temper; to anneal