困难
kùn nan
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 困難
Difficult; a difficulty or hardship. A neutral, very common word for problems at work, in study, with money or in life.
Khó khăn, trở ngại (dùng như tính từ hoặc danh từ). Là từ trung tính, rất thông dụng để nói về những khó khăn trong công việc, học tập, tiền bạc, cuộc sống.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 061 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 难/難 = nạn; etymology of “khốn nạn” = 困難 · Vietnamese false friend: Idiomer entry “khốn nạn” (khon-nan). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “困难” mean?
Difficult; a difficulty or hardship. A neutral, very common word for problems at work, in study, with money or in life. Literally: hard-pressed and difficult
Is “困难” formal or informal?
困难 is generally neutral.