Learn how to ask about someone's age
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| Привет Всем. С Вами Светлана. Hi everybody! I’m Svetlana. |
| Welcome to RussianPod101.com’s Русский язык за три минуты. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Russian. |
| We have already covered a lot of phrases and some grammar in previous lessons. In this lesson let’s move to the next topic. We are going to learn how to ask about one’s age in Russian. It is a very delicate question, especially for ladies. You’d better be careful about asking this question to people who look over 25. But it is definitely one of the survival phrases, so we need to learn it anyway. |
| Formal and informal ways to ask about one’s age are almost the same. You simply alter the pronouns Тебе for informal case and Вам for formal one. They sound like new words but they are just modified forms of previously learned pronouns Ты and Вы but in dative case. |
| So let’s go ahead and try to ask somebody about one’s age. The casual way to do so, would be Сколько тебе лет? One more time |
| [slowly] Сколько тебе лет? |
| Let’s break it down to know the meaning of new words. The first word is Сколько which literally means How, How much or How many. Тебе, as I already mentioned, is the modified form of the pronoun Ты. And the word Лет stands for Years old. No verbs or particles needed. Simply say, |
| Сколько тебе лет? |
| The formal version won’t change a lot. You simply substitute pronoun Тебе with Вам. Say: Сколько Вам лет? |
| [slowly] Сколько Вам лет? |
| So easy!!! |
| But what I recommend you is to add the word Извините before the question. Do you remember its meaning? It came out in Lesson 5 when we leaned apologies, remember? So I think it’s a great chance to practise some vocabulary and add a little bit of courtesy. Try: |
| Извините, сколько вам лет? Excuse me, how old are you? |
| Now, it is time to answer it. What we need here is just the modified pronoun I in dative case and a number. To recall the numbers in Russian you can refer to the Lessons 6 and 7. |
| So let’s get started. Here are some examples. |
| “I am 18” - Мне восемнадцать. |
| “I am 20” - Мне двадцать |
| “I am 25” - Мне двадцать пять. |
| “I am 34” - Мне тридцать четыре. |
| “I am 40” - Мне сорок. |
| Very short and simple. |
| I love how we employ the materials we learned before. Good job! |
| Now it’s time for Svetlana’s Tips. |
| Asking about the age of somebody who is obviously younger than you or at your age is absolutely normal. But this question might irritate both men and women who are above 25. Even if you put it in the super polite form it might be offensive for them and, of course, you won’t get the answer. Sometimes it is better to ask indirect question like when he or she graduated from high school for example. |
| Okay! That’s it for this lesson. You did a good job. In this lesson, we learned how to ask and answer the question about your age. Next time I would like to touch upon some basic Russian grammar that might seem a little bit confusing at first time but I am sure we will handle it. In fact it gives you more freedom to play with the words you ve learned and will learn in our next Русский язык за три минуты lesson. See you soon. Пока Пока |
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