Learn how to ask about someone's age
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| Hej, jag heter Elin. Hi everybody! I’m Elin. |
| Welcome to SwedishPod101.com’s “Svenska på tre minuter”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swedish. |
| In the last two lessons, we learned the main usages of the verb att vara, which means “to be” in Swedish. |
| In this lesson, we are going to learn a third practical usage of this verb. We will use att vara to talk about your age. |
| It’s normal for young people in Sweden to ask each other’s age. Of course, it might be risky to ask it to people over 25. Age can be sensitive. |
| If someone asks you Hur gammal är du? it simply means “How old are you?” in Swedish. |
| [slowly] Hur gammal är du? |
| Now you have to answer with your age. In Swedish you use the same verb we learned in the two previous lessons, att vara, to be. |
| Here are some examples. |
| “I am 18” - jag är arton. |
| “I am 20” - jag är tjugo. |
| “I am 25” - jag är tjugofem. |
| “I am 40” - jag är fyrtio |
| etc. |
| Can you see what is happening here? We start with sentence jag är arton, “I am 18” |
| jag är means “I am”. This is the conjugated version of att vara. |
| Arton is “18”. We learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7. |
| [slowly] jag är arton. |
| Usually Swedes add two more words to this sentence to indicate that they are explicitly talking about age and no t something else. |
| So you might hear Swedes adding the words år gammal after the age like this: |
| jag är tjugo år gammal. |
| [slowly] jag är tjugo år gammal. |
| The word år means “years,” and gammal means “old.” Let’s look at the sentence again. |
| jag är trettiofyra år gammal. |
| [slowly]jag är trettiofyra år gammal. |
| “I am 34 years old”. |
| Now it’s time for Elin’s Insights. |
| If you are asked about your age but don’t want to tell the pe |
| rson you can simply say that “It is secret”. In Swedish it is: |
| Det är hemligt. |
| [slowly]Det är hemligt. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age using att vara. Next time we’ll learn how to use the verb att ha, “to have” for talking about possessions. Do you know how how to say that you have a car? |
| I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Svenska på tre minuter lesson. |
| På återseende! |
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