Linguistic Puzzle #3

The puzzle was taken from the book “Problems from Linguistics Olympiads, 1965-1975”, editors: by V.I.Belikov, E.V.Muravenko, and M.E.Alekseev, MCNMO - Moscow, 2007.

The puzzle was adopted and translated from Russian by LaGuardia Society of Physics Students and edited by Vân Bich T Trần.

The puzzle is purely logical and no prior knowledge of Vietnamese is required to solve it. Please do not search for the translations. You can also click on the sentences below to hear how they are pronounced, the audio were generated by the Google Translate tool. The solution to this puzzle will be published in the next Ad Astra issue. Good luck!

The following are six sentences in Vietnamese and their translations to English in arbitrary order.

1. Cái   này   là   cái   hoa. 🔊

2. Mình   mua   ba   cái   hoa. 🔊

3. Bác   bán   cái   đĩa   kia. 🔊

4. Cái   bình   này   đẹp. 🔊

5. Cái   này   là   cái   bình   đẹp. 🔊

6. Mình   đem   năm   cái   đĩa. 🔊

Translations: This vase is beautiful; I bring five plates; I buy three flowers; This is a flower; Uncle sells that plate; This is a beautiful vase.

Question 1. Match the above sentences with their translations.
Question 2. Translate the following sentences to Vietnamese: This is a beautiful flower; I sell five beautiful flowers; This is a plate.


Please send us your solutions to adastraletter@gmail.com, use "linguistic puzzle, Ad Astra Newsletter, issue #3 2020" as the subject line.


★ Solution of Linguistic Puzzle #2: