Learn how to ask about someone's age
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| Hallo, ich heiße Laura. Hi everybody! I’m Laura. | |
| Welcome to GermanPod101.com’s “Deutsch in 3 Minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn German. | |
| In the last two lessons, we learned the main usages of the verb sein, which means “to be” in German. | |
| Today we will use this verb to talk about your age. | |
| It’s normal for young people in Germany to ask each other’s age. Of course, it might be risky to ask it to people over 25! | |
| If someone asks you Wie alt sind Sie? just know that it means “How old are you?” in formal German. | |
| [slowly] Wie alt sind Sie? | |
| In informal German, it would be: | |
| Wie alt bist du? | |
| [slowly] Wie alt bist du? | |
| Now you have to answer with your age! | |
| Here are some examples. | |
| “I am 18” - Ich bin achtzehn. | |
| “I am 20” - Ich bin zwanzig. | |
| “I am 25” - Ich bin fünfundzwanzig. | |
| “I am 40” - Ich bin vierzig. | |
| Can you see what is happening here? We start with sentence Ich bin, which means “I am”. This is the conjugated version of sein. | |
| Achtzehn is “18”. We learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7. | |
| [slowly] Ich bin achtzehn. | |
| Sometimes young German people won’t ask your age directly, but instead, will ask your birth year. | |
| You might hear this question in an informal situation: | |
| Welcher Jahrgang bist du? | |
| [slowly] Welcher Jahrgang bist du? | |
| This literally means “Of which year are you?” | |
| You just have to answer using the two last figures of your birth year: | |
| Ich bin Jahrgang neunundachtzig “I am of the year 89.” | |
| Now it’s time for Laura’s Insights. | |
| If You are estimating somebody’s age, you say: | |
| “Du bist ist um die dreißig. “You‘re around 30“. | |
| “Du bist um die fünfundzwanzig“, You’re around 25 and so on. | |
| You are not liable to overestimate the other’s age but as concrete as necessary at the same time. | |
| In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age and birth date using the verb sein. Next time we’ll learn how to use haben, the verb to have for talking about possessions. | |
| I'll be waiting for you in the next Deutsch in 3 Minuten lesson. | |
| Bis bald! |
24 Comments
HideHi Carlos,
Thank you for your comment and sorry for the late reply.
Your problem sounds a lot like Larrissa's. Please have a look
at the drop-down menu with the lesson numbers. You can skip
back to previous lessons any time.😉
If you have any questions, please let us know.
Kind regards,
Reinhard
Team GermanPod101.com
Hi Ivan,
In this series, the voice recorder is in the [Vocabulary] section.
It pops out when you click on the microphone icon.
If you can't find it, please let us know!
PS: The voice recording tool is developed by Flash, and you need access to the site on your PC or Mac to enjoy the feature.
This special feature is available for Premium and Premium plus subscriptions. To know more about our subscription plans, please check out:
https://www.germanpod101.com/member/member_upnewapi.php
Sincerely,
Cristiane
Team GermanPod101.com
Hi Larissa2005,
Thank you for your feedback.👍
Is there any chance that you are looking in the wrong
place, maybe another series of lessons?
The number of this very lesson is 13. You can see that number
under the black box that contains the video, on the right hand side.
Number 13 is actually part of a drop-down menu. If you click on the little
arrow next to it, you get the whole list of lessons that are part of this series.
Lesson 6 in this series covers the numbers 1-10 and lesson 7 deals with
11-100.
Just have another look and if you still can't find it or if I have misunderstood your question,
feel free to get back to me.
If you have any further questions, please let us know.
Kind regards,
Reinhard
Team GermanPod101.com
You say that we learned about languages in lessons 6 and 7, yet that is not the case right now.
Hi there,
Maybe this is not right place to ask this, but I hear very often in audio clips that there is some recording tool for premium users, but I just cannot find it.
Can you help me on this, please?
Thanks,
Ivan
Hello, It was mentioned in this lesson that we studied numerals in lessons 6 and 7. There were no numerals in my lessons 6 and 7 on this site. Where are they? How can one study this topic without having studied the numerals well???
Hi Luis,
Sorry for the late reply.
I will pass your message on and I am sure
Laura will be very happy to hear that you like her
lessons so much.
Thank you.
If you have any further questions, please let us know.
Kind regards,
Reinhard
Team GermanPod101.com
Hello Natasha,
Sorry for the late reply.
"um die" in this context means "around" or "approximately".
Thank you.
If you have any further questions, please let us know.
Kind regards,
Reinhard
Team GermanPod101.com
what is the meaning of um die
Hello Luis,
Thank you for posting.
We’ll consider your feedback for our future development.
Let us know if you have any question.
Anne
Team GermanPod101.com