来
lái
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 來
To come — to move towards where the speaker is. The place follows directly: 来中国 'come to China'. Before another verb it means coming in order to do it: 来看我 'come to see me'. After a verb of motion it shows movement towards the speaker: 回来 'come back'.
Đến, tới, lại: di chuyển về phía người nói. Nơi đến đặt ngay sau động từ: 来中国 (đến Trung Quốc). Đứng trước một động từ khác là “đến để làm gì”: 来看我 (đến thăm tôi). Đặt sau động từ chỉ sự di chuyển thì cho biết hướng về phía người nói: 回来 (trở về, quay lại).
VerbRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 063 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “来” mean?
To come — to move towards where the speaker is. The place follows directly: 来中国 'come to China'. Before another verb it means coming in order to do it: 来看我 'come to see me'. After a verb of motion it shows movement towards the speaker: 回来 'come back'.
Is “来” formal or informal?
来 is generally neutral.