小朋友
xiǎo péng yǒu
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
A young child, in the kindly way adults speak to or about children. An adult asks a child 小朋友，你叫什么名字？ and a kindergarten teacher greets the class with 小朋友们. Here 友 keeps its third tone (xiǎopéngyǒu), unlike plain 朋友, péngyou.
Cách người lớn gọi trẻ nhỏ một cách trìu mến, giống “bé”, “cháu”, “các em nhỏ”. Người lớn hỏi trẻ: 小朋友，你叫什么名字？ (cháu tên là gì?); cô giáo mẫu giáo gọi cả lớp là 小朋友们. Chữ 友 ở đây đọc đủ thanh 3 (xiǎopéngyǒu), khác với 朋友 (péngyou).
NounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (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 “小朋友” mean?
A young child, in the kindly way adults speak to or about children. An adult asks a child 小朋友，你叫什么名字？ and a kindergarten teacher greets the class with 小朋友们. Here 友 keeps its third tone (xiǎopéngyǒu), unlike plain 朋友, péngyou. Literally: little friend
Is “小朋友” formal or informal?
小朋友 is generally neutral.