万事起头难
wàn shì qǐ tóu nán
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 萬事起頭難
The beginning is the hardest part of anything. Said to encourage someone who is struggling at the start of a new job, course or project.
Việc gì cũng khó nhất ở lúc bắt đầu. Dùng để động viên người đang chật vật khi mới bắt tay vào một công việc, một môn học hay một dự án mới.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (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): etymology of “vạn sự khởi đầu nan” = 萬事起頭難 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “vạn sự khởi đầu nan” (van-su-khoi-dau-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 “万事起头难” mean?
The beginning is the hardest part of anything. Said to encourage someone who is struggling at the start of a new job, course or project. Literally: ten thousand things, the start is hard
Is “万事起头难” formal or informal?
万事起头难 is generally neutral.