Talking about AGE in English

Telling someone your age or asking them theirs may seem like an extremely simple topic, but in reality, English learners make mistakes all the time when trying to speak on this subject.

In this short video, I’m going to give you a simple explanation of this common mistake to help you never make it again!

Watch it now, read the transcript, and remember to COMMENT below if you enjoyed this video or if you have a suggestion for another video you would like us to make.

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Free Present: A Revolutionary Guide to Connecting Your Life to English

Transcript:

Aww yeah, RealLifers, what’s going on?

This is Ethan, with a short video for you.

Today I’m going to talk to you about how to correctly talk about age in English.

Is this RealLife?

Alright guys, so, have you ever said “I have 24 years?” for example?

I wanted to point out two things that are wrong with saying “I have,” and then a number, “years.”

This is not correct in English, and I find that a lot of my students say this all the time.

So, the problem with this is that it might just be a direct translation form your language, that it sounds good to you because this is how you would say it in your own language. But in English, we don’t say it like this.

First Problem

The first problem is that in English you don’t have an age, you are an age.

So, you use the verb to be, you conjugate the verb to be.

So, for example, I am 24. I don’t have 24, I am 24.

Second Problem

So, the second problem – you might have heard that I didn’t use “years” when I said that.

So, you can’t say “I am 24 years,” this is also not correct.

There are two different ways that you can say it correctly.

You can either just leave off the years, so I could say “I am 24,” or you can use the whole phrase, which would be years old. We say years old, not years. So, “I am 24 years old.”

Alright guys, so, if you can start saying it like this, you’ll sound perfect. Really easy, and it’ll make you sound a lot more like a native speaker than if you say “I have 24 years.”

Bonus

And then, let me just give you a bonus.

A lot of people also tend to say that they get, or gain, a certain amount of years.

So, they say this, you know, in their birthday, “This year I’m going to get 25 years.” But this is also not correct. Ok? So, we say that you turn a certain amount of years, so use the verb to turn.

That’s it!

Alright guys, I hope that you find this useful, start using this in your daily speech, and you’re going to sound a lot better in your English.

Have a good one. Later!