lầu

Non-Sino-Vietnamese reading of Chinese 樓 (SV: lâu).

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [ləw˨˩]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [ləw˦˩]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [ləw˨˩]

• Audio (Hà Nội):

  (file)

lầu

1. (historical) a multistory building
   • 8th century CE, Cui Hao, 《黃鶴樓》; Vietnamese translation from Tản Đà, transl. (1937 October 10), Ngày Nay‎^[1], number 80; English translation from Peter Harris, transl. (2009), Three Hundred Tang Poems, page 39

     Hạc vàng ai cưỡi đi đâu?
     Mà đây Hoàng Hạc riêng lầu còn trơ!

     Long ago someone rode away on a yellow crane;
     All that’s left here, pointlessly, is Yellow Crane Tower.

   • 8th century CE, Li Bai, 《黃鶴樓送孟浩然之廣陵》; Vietnamese translation from Ngô Tất Tố, transl. (1987), “Tại lầu Hoàng Hạc tiễn Mạnh Hạo Nhiên đi Quảng Lăng”, in Thơ Đường [Tang Poetry], volume 2; English translation from Andrew Wong, transl. (2010), “At the Yellow Crane Tower to Bid Meng Haoran Bon Voyage [to Guangling]”, in Classical Chinese Poems in English‎^[2]

     Bạn từ lầu Hạc lên đường
     Giữa mùa hoa khói châu Dương xuôi dòng

     At the Yellow Crane Tower, my friend, to the west you said goodbye;
     In this misty, flowery glorious spring, downstream for Yangzhou you ply.

2. (architecture, chiefly Southern Vietnam) a floor (except the ground floor)

   lầu 1 ― the 1st/2nd floor (1 level above the ground story)

   nhà lầu ― a multistory house

   nhảy lầu tự tử ― to jump off a high floor to kill oneself

In southern Vietnamese, the ground floor is called trệt and each floor above it is a lầu numbered from lầu 1. By contrast, in northern and central Vietnamese, floors are called tầng, the ground floor is numbered as tầng 1, and tầng 0 technically refers to a crawl space.

• (a floor (except the ground floor)): tầng (southern Vietnam)

• tầng