Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

Hēi , dàjiā hǎo , wǒ jiào Mǎ Yànrú .Hi everybody! I’m YanruMa.
Welcome to ChineseClass101.com’s “Sān fēnzhōng Hànyǔ”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Chinese.
In the last lesson, we learned how to tell people your location.
In this lesson, we are going to learn one easy sentence to talk about your age.
It’s normal for young people in China to ask each other their age. Of course, it might be risky to ask people who are over 25!
If someone asks you Nǐ duō dà le? Just know that it means “How old are you?” in Chinese.
[slowly] Nǐ duō dà le?
It’s usually used between young people of similar ages or to ask people who are children or younger than you.
But in formal Chinese, when you want to ask the age of old people or those who are much older than you, it would be: Nín duō dà niánjì le?
[slowly] Nín duō dà niánjì le?
Now you have to answer with your age in Chinese.
Here are some examples.
“I am 18” - Wǒ shíbā suì.
“I am 20” - Wǒ èrshí suì.
“I am 25” - Wǒ èrshíwǔ suì.
“I am 40” - Wǒ sìshí suì.
As you can see, it’s short and easy for you to memorize. Suì means ‘years old’. In Chinese, the verb “to be” is shì. But here you can just leave it out. So all you have to remember is Wǒ, the number representing your age, and suì at the end.
Sometimes young Chinese people won’t ask your age directly, but instead, will ask your birth year.
You might hear this question in another way:
Nǐ shì jǐ jǐ nián de?
[slowly] Nǐ shì jǐ jǐ nián de?
This literally means “you are of what year?”
You just have to answer using the two last figures of your birth year:
Wǒ shì bā jiǔ nián de. which literally means “I am of 89 year.”
Now it’s time for Yanru’s Insights.
Were you born in the year 2000? Sorry, you can’t say that you are of zero-zero. You have to say the entire year - èr líng líng líng nián .
In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age and birthdate. Next time we’ll learn how to talk about possessions.
I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next lesson.
Zài jiàn !

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