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Vietnamese words that are easy if you know Chinese #1 - cao

 When you see that cao in Vietnamese means "tall; high" you immediately think it must have come from Chinese, and indeed it seems to be the case. The character for it in Chữ Nôm is 高, which is read gāo in Mandarin and also means "tall; high" there.

And this is not all, because many compounds with cao are recognizable if you know Chinese. According to chunom.org these are some:

tối cao (最高)

(Mandarin zuìgāo; Japanese さいこう; Korean 최고)

Also meaning "supreme; top-level; the highest". From glosbe we get sentences like

Sự Chuộc Tội vĩ đại là hành động tối cao của sự tha thứ.

The great Atonement was the supreme act of forgiveness.

Socrates cho rằng đạo đức là cái thiện tối cao.

Socrates considered virtue to be the ultimate good.

đề cao (提高)

(Mandarin tígāo; Korean 제고)

The word in Mandarin means "raise; enhance; increase; improve" (I'm not familiar with the word in Korean but according to the dictionary it seems to have the same meanings). In Vietnamese, chunom.org lists the word's meanings as "to heighten; to think hightly of". The meanings at glosbe are related, but some of them may be a bit of a stretch:

Seymour, chúng ta không đề cao sự ngớ ngẩn đó với bài báo.

Seymour, we don't dignify absurdities with coverage.

Other meanings listed by glosbe are: "enhance; exalt; give prominence to; heighten, spiritualize".

There are other compounds which are easy to understand from a Chinese point of view, like cao điểm (高點, high + point) meaning "peak; height; highest level", but these seem to be less common both in Vietnamese and Chinese. Check the whole list on chunom.org for more. 

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