是
shì
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
To be (am, is, are): the verb that links one noun to another. It never changes form, and it is not put before an adjective: 'I am well' is 我很好, not 我是好. The negative is 不是; on its own, 是 or 是的 answers 'yes, that's right'.
Động từ “là”, dùng để nối hai danh từ với nhau. Cũng như “là” trong tiếng Việt, nó không đứng trước tính từ: “tôi khỏe” là 我很好, không nói 我是好. Dạng phủ định là 不是 (không phải là); 是 hoặc 是的 đứng một mình là lời đáp “vâng, đúng vậy”.
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 “是” mean?
To be (am, is, are): the verb that links one noun to another. It never changes form, and it is not put before an adjective: 'I am well' is 我很好, not 我是好. The negative is 不是; on its own, 是 or 是的 answers 'yes, that's right'.
Is “是” formal or informal?
是 is generally neutral.