“Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” in Vietnamese: “Tôi có thể mua thuốc mà không cần đơn bác sĩ không?”

When to use it

Use it in a pharmacy to check whether a medicine is sold over the counter.

“Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” — The sentence in English

In “Can I buy medicine without a prescription?” ‘Can’ moves before ‘I’, and ‘without’ alone means ‘with no’.

Can

auxiliary verbcan · tense: present · modal verb of ability or permission; it opens the question

I

pronounpersonal pronoun, always written with a capital letter

buy

verbbuy · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · main verb after "can"

medicine

noununcountable noun here, used in a general sense

without

prepositionpreposition

a

determinerindefinite article

prescription

nounnoun; a doctor's written order for medicine

“Tôi có thể mua thuốc mà không cần đơn bác sĩ không?” — The sentence in Vietnamese

In “Tôi có thể mua thuốc mà không cần đơn bác sĩ không?” the order stays as in a statement. ‘không’ appears twice: first as negation (‘không cần’, no need of), then at the end as the question particle.

Tôi

pronoun'I', the person asking

có

auxiliary verbcó thể · tense: unmarked · first half of có thể 'can'

thể

auxiliary verbcó thể · tense: unmarked · có thể sits before the main verb mua

mua

verbmua · tense: unmarked · 'buy'; never changes form

thuốc

nounnoun 'medicine', no plural needed

mà

coordinating conjunctionlinks the two parts: 'and yet without'

không

adverbnegation 'not', before 'cần'

cần

verbcần · tense: unmarked · 'need'; không cần = without

đơn

noun'prescription slip'

bác

nounfirst syllable of bác sĩ 'doctor'

sĩ

nounđơn bác sĩ = a doctor's prescription

không

particleyes/no question particle at the end

English × Vietnamese: What changes from one language to the other

English asks by inverting ‘Can I’; Vietnamese adds ‘không’ at the end. English has one preposition, ‘without’; Vietnamese uses the phrase ‘mà không cần’.

Example conversation