How to Talk About Age in English

46

Hello, my name is Emma, and in today's video,

I am going to teach you something very useful,

and that is how to talk about age, or how to talk about how old someone is.

So we're going to look at words like "early",

"mid", "late", and how we can add these

to people's ages.

We're going to talk about the word "ish" and

"age", and we're also going to talk about

the word "something" when it refers to age.

So imagine this situation.

You see someone, and someone says, "Oh, how old is your teacher?" or "How old is your

How old is that lady at the store?"

And you look at the person, and you think, "Hmm, I don't really know.

I don't know how old this lady is.

Maybe around 50 years old?

So when you kind of know the age, but you're

not exactly sure, that's when we use a lot

of these types of words, and I'll explain how to use them in a moment.

But first, let's look at some common mistakes

people make when they talk about age.

I have here four sentences.

One of these sentences is correct.

I want you to try to figure out which are

correct sentences and which ones are not correct.

Well, the first sentence I hear many students

say, "She has 50 years." or "She has 50 years

What's the problem here?

The problem is the verb.

When we're talking about age, we do not use "have" in English.

We use "have" in other languages, but in English,

we use our "be" verb, so we can say, "I am",

"you are", "he is", "she is", "we are", "they are".

And then we have the number.

So let's look at an example of that.

So this looks a little bit better.

We see "she is", that's good, they have the right verb, "she is 50 years."

Is that correct?

It's not correct because there is a word missing, and that word is "old".

In English, we say, "She is 50 years old.", "He is 20 years old."

So we need the word "old" here, and it's missing.

So this one's incorrect as well.

So I'm just going to put an "x" and an "x".

What about this one?

"She is 50 years old."

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's a great sentence.

"She is 50 years old."

And what about the last one?

"She is 50 years old."

And we have some hyphens here.

So this is something that's very confusing,

even to English speakers who are native English

So this sentence is incorrect because of the

hyphens, but I'll explain when we use hyphens

a little later on in this lesson.

So this is incorrect.

All right, so now let's get started and find out more about age.

So, there are many times when we don't know a person's exact age.

So what can we say about a person when we don't know their age?

Well, there's many different options in English.

When we don't know the exact age of a person,

one thing we can do is if we know the decade

they are in, we can use that.

So, for example, if I think somebody is between

30 and 39 years old, I don't know if they're

30, I don't know if they're 35, they look

between 30 and 39, I can say, "Oh, the woman,

she is in her 30s."

And notice this has an "s" on it.

"She is in her 30s."

This means she is somewhere between 30 and 39, but I don't know exactly what her age

We can use this with all the decades.

We can say, "He is in his 20s.", "He is in his 40s.", "She is in her 50s.", "They are

in their 60s.", "I am in my 70s.", "He is in his 80s.", "We are in our 90s."

And if you're talking about teenagers, you know, you can also use this, too, "They are

in their teens."

So for somebody who is 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, or 19, you can say, "They are in their

So, what about if I want to talk about myself?

We usually use this for people when we don't

know their ages, but I know how old I am.

Would I use something like this?

And the reason is maybe I don't want you to know my age.

So a lot of people, especially women, they like to keep their age a secret.

So one way to keep your age a secret is you could always just give the decade.

So I could say, "Oh, I'm in my 20s.", or "I'm in my 30s."

You take a guess, which one is it?

Or "I'm in my teens."

Clearly not, but this is what you could say, "I am in my 30s."

It's a way to avoid giving your specific age.

Okay, what's another way we can talk about age if we don't know someone's age?

Well, we can use the word "something", "something".

How old is she?

She is 30-something, he's 40-something.

If you want, you can also have years old.

He's 30-something years old, she's

40-something years old, or she's 40-something.

Both are possible.

So "something" means you know that they're somewhere between 30 and 39, but you don't

know exactly the age.

Can I say this about myself?

Can I say, "I'm a 30-something year old."?

This sounds very uncommon.

I probably would not use it to talk about

myself, but I use it to talk about other people.

So what's another way to say...

To talk about somebody's age when you don't know their age exactly?

Well, we can use the ending "ish".

So "ish" can be added to a number in order to

mean "around" or "about" or "approximately".

You're not exactly sure, but it's around.

So for example, I think this woman is 70.

I can say, "Eh, she's 70-ish."

Maybe she's 69, maybe she's 71 or 72, she's around 70.

So the woman is 70-ish.

Let's look at another example.

You know, there's a teenager, I think he's

18, maybe 19, I can say, "Eh, he is 18-ish."

So that means "around".

And again, it shows I'm not exactly sure.

We tend to use "ish" not really in writing, we use it in conversation.

So this is better to use when you are speaking.

I would not recommend to write this.

All right, so now let's look at some other examples of how to talk about age.

Sometimes we think we know how old someone is around.

So maybe we think that they are between 30

and 33, or maybe between 34 and 36, or maybe

37 to 39.

What we can use for these situations is the words "early", "mid", and "late".

We use "early" when it's the early part of a person's decade.

So if they're 40, 41, 42, that's the early part of the 40s.

We use "mid" when it's in the middle, so maybe

44, 45, 46, that's the middle of the 40 decade.

And then if we're talking about the end of it, we might say 47, 48, and 49, that's the

late part of a person's 40th decade.

So let's look at some examples of this.

If I say, "I am in my early 30s", this means my age is between 30 and 33.

I'm not being exact, but I might say something like this.

You know, if I introduce myself, I might say, "Oh, I'm in my early 30s."

So between 30 and 33.

And notice the structure of this.

We have the preposition here "in", we have a word such as "my", "your", "his", "her",

"their", and then we have the descriptor word,

"early", "mid", or "late", and then we have

our age with an "s".

So, "I am in my early 30s."

"I am in my mid-30s."

So this means between 34 and 36 years old.

Now, I notice there's a space here, so I'm going to make a quick correction, and I am

going to add a hyphen.

So, for "mid", we need a hyphen.

For "early" and "late", we don't use a hyphen here.

"I am in my mid-30s", 34 to 36.

What about "late"?

We can say, "I am in my late 30s", and that refers to ages 37 to 39.

All right, so I'm going to give some other examples of this now.

Let's play a game.

I'm going to say an age, and you tell me if it's "early", "mid", or "late".

"Catherine is 34."

So you might say, "Catherine is in her mid-30s", and you would be correct.

"Amy is 91."

"Amy is in her early 90s."

What about "March"?

"March is 29."

You can say, "March is in her late 20s."

So this is really useful.

One thing you can do with this is you can think about yourself.

What age are you?

Are you in your early, mid, or late?

You know, and then you write the decade.

So try to make sentences.

You can say, "I am in my late 60s."

"I am in my early teens."

Whatever the case may be, you can make a sentence using this.

You can also try to think about people in your life.

You know, think about your family and your

friends, and try to make some sentences using

this structure.

So, "He is in his", you know, and then you

have the age, or "She is in her", so use that

structure and try to make some sentences using this.

So, the question that we want to find out the

answer to, to hyphenate or not to hyphenate.

So first of all, what is a hyphen?

Well, a hyphen is this.

It's a small line that connects two words.

So, when it comes to age, sometimes we hyphenate and sometimes we don't.

So let me tell you when we don't hyphenate and when we do hyphenate.

So if the age you write comes after the noun it describes, you don't hyphenate.

So that sounds really confusing.

Let's look at an example to help us understand this better.

My mother turned 66 years old.

So "mother" is the noun.

What describes her?

So, "66 years old" is describing my mother.

My mother is the noun, so we know that "mother"

is the noun, and because "mother" or the

age comes after our noun "mother", there's no hyphens.

So there's no line between "66" and "years",

and there's no line between "years" and "old".

What about when we do the opposite?

Well, if age describes and is also before the noun, then we do hyphenate.

So this might sound confusing.

Let's look at an example with "mother" again.

In this case, notice "my 66 - year - old mother" is nice.

So we have the same noun, which is "mother",

but in this case the age comes before the

So because it comes before, we hyphenate it.

There's another example of when we hyphenate

ages, and that's when an age is a noun.

So remember, nouns can have articles in front of them, like "the" or sometimes "a".

In this case, if age is a noun, for example, "a 35-year-old is at the store".

In this case, age is a noun; we're talking about a specific person who's 35.

We hyphenate "35-year-old".

And notice there's no "s" with "year";

"35-year-old", that's how we know it's also a noun.

Okay, so let's practice what we learned.

I don't know how old Queen Elizabeth is.

I don't know how old Michael Jordan is.

And I don't know that Ed - or I don't know how old Ed Sheeran is.

I know Queen Elizabeth is 90-something, Michael

Jordan is 60-something, and Ed Sheeran is

30-something years old.

So let's try to use the word "early", "mid", and "late" with these examples.

I've made up the ages, I'm not exactly sure,

but let's use these ages and use the words

"early", "mid", and "late" with them.

So Queen Elizabeth is 96 years old.

This means she is in her - so 96, is it early, mid, or late?

This means she is in her mid-90s.

So I'm just going to write the word "mid" and hyphenate it.

Michael Jordan is 60 years old.

This means he is in his - so 60, is this early, mid, or late?

This means it's early.

You can say he is in his early 60s.

And, finally, Ed Sheeran.

Ed Sheeran is 34 years old.

He is in his - so 34, do you think it's in the early, mid, or late?

This would be "mid", again, he is in his mid-30s.

If he were 37, he would be in his late 30s.

All right, so thank you for watching and for learning about age with me.

There was a lot of material and content in this video.

So I recommend you practice this by visiting our website at www.engvid.com.

There you can take a quiz to practice what you learned today.

And remember, practice makes perfect.

By taking our quizzes, you can really help remember what you learned.

I also recommend you check out my YouTube channel and subscribe.

I have many different videos on all sorts of different topics related to English.

So, thank you so much for watching, and until next time, take care.