Hi, Bob the Canadian here.
Welcome to this English lesson about age
and how to talk about age in English.
Soon, it will be my birthday.
I usually don't give the exact date,
and I usually don't say my exact age,
but let's just say that later this summer,
I will have a birthday and I will still be in my late 40s.
But because my birthday is coming up,
I thought I should do a lesson
on how to talk about age in English.
So do watch the whole lesson.
I'm going to start with the basics,
and then I'm gonna progress
through some intermediate vocabulary and phrases
that you can use to talk about age in English.
And then I will give you some more advanced phrases
and some more advanced vocabulary towards the end
of the video.
So stick around. Practice the basics.
Maybe learn something new in this English lesson
about how to talk about your age
and the age of other people.
(light music)
Well, welcome to this English lesson
about how to talk about age in English.
Before we get started, though,
if this is your first time here,
don't forget to click that red Subscribe button below
and give me a thumbs up if this video
helps you learn just a little bit more English.
But let's start the lesson.
Let's start with the basics.
In English, when you say how old you are,
you say, "I am," and then the age.
So if you are 25, you say, "I am 25."
I know in other languages,
you use the equivalent of our verb to have.
We do not do this in English.
In English, you would not say,
"I have 25 years."
Do not say that.
In English, you would say, "I am 25 years old,"
or, "I am 25," or, "I'm 25."
And the same goes for when you ask someone
how old they are in English.
You don't say, "How many years do you have?"
You say, "How old are you?"
So in English, a little bit different than some languages.
You definitely say things like, "I am 25."
And if you ask the question, you say, "How old are you?"
But let me talk about that for a sec.
With kids, it is okay to say, "How old are you?"
With adults, though, it's kind of a private
and personal question.
And you normally wouldn't ask it,
except for on a certain day of the year.
And that day is their birthday.
A person's birthday, when they are an adult,
is really the only day where it's okay to ask them
how old they are.
You could say, "Hey, how old are you today?"
"So how old are you turning today?"
So for instance, later, when it's my birthday,
people will come over and say, "Happy birthday."
We will have a birthday cake with candles,
and people will feel like it's okay
to ask a very private question.
They'll say, "Hey, how old are you?"
And I will respond and say, "I'm in my late 40s."
(laughing) No, but seriously, though,
in English, you can ask children how old they are
almost at any point.
So if you are visiting your brother and sister-in-law
and they have a child, your nephew or niece,
you could say, "Hey, how old are you now?"
And that is totally fine.
But you rarely ask people who are adults in English
how old they are.
It's kind of a private question.
So wait for their birthday.
If you get invited over to their birthday party,
you can then say, "Hey, how old are you?"
Oh and one more thing about birthdays.
We use two different phrases
to talk about how old you are going to become
on your birthday.
We would say, "I am going to be," and then the age.
So let's say later this summer,
I was going to be 25.
I would say, "Oh, on my birthday, I'm going to be 25,"
or, "On my birthday, I'm going to turn 25."
We should for a minute go over
all of the terms we use to describe different ages
that people are.
When you are first born, we call you a newborn.
A newborn is someone who is just a few months old.
You could also call a newborn a baby,
but definitely, a newborn is a person who is just born
and is probably only a month or two old.
After that, we would just call you a baby
for a little while.
Once a baby is old enough that they start to crawl and walk,
usually when they start to walk,
we start to call them a toddler.
So a toddler is a young, young, young child
who is learning to walk or who has recently learned to walk.
After that, we just refer to you as a kid or child.
Someone between the age of three and four and maybe 10,
we would just call them a child or a kid.
And then we have this term now tween.
It's not a real word, but a tween is someone
who isn't a child anymore but isn't a teenager.
They're kind of between those two ages,
and we will sometimes call them a tween.
So a tween is like someone who is 10 or 11 or 12 years old.
Once you turn 13, you see the teen in the number 13.
Anyone from the age of 13 to 19 is called a teenager.
Teenagers are young and carefree.
That would be a good description for them.
At least that's what I was like when I was a teenager.
Once you turn 20, we would probably refer to you
as a young adult.
Anyone who is from the age of 20 to about 30,
we would call a young adult.
Anyone from the age of 30 to about 45,
we would refer to as an adult.
And then if you are age 45 to 60, maybe 65,
we would say that you are middle-aged
and you might also hear people describe that age
as being middle age with no D on the end.
I think the most correct term is to say
that you are middle-aged.
I'm middle-aged, by the way.
I am a middle-aged man. (laughing)
I should just admit it.
Once you are 60 to 65, we would start to call you a senior.
Some people are seniors at the age of 55.
It really just depends where you live.
But if you are close to retirement or retired,
we would call you a senior.
And then if you are older than that,
we now are starting to call people
who are very old elderly.
So an elderly person would be someone
maybe over the age of 70 or over the age of 75.
So those are all of your terms.
I hope that helped you get a better sense
of how we describe the general ages
of different groups of people as they get older.
We should talk a little bit too
about how to compare yourself in age to someone else.
So we have terms like younger and older
or youngest and oldest.
When you are older than someone,
it means that you were born before them.
If you are younger than someone,
you were born later than them.
And this is how we compare our age to different people.
In my family, I have an older brother
and an older sister and a younger brother
and a younger sister.
So you can see how I used those words
to compare our ages.
My brother is the oldest,
and my other brother is the youngest.
So that means they are at the top of the family
or at the end of the family.
Should I have said the beginning of the family?
Maybe I should've.
And then lastly, I just wanted to talk
about another term.
I am a middle child.
So when you are not the oldest
and you are not the youngest,
and if you are in a family of three or five,
you are perfectly in the middle in terms of age,
and we would refer to you as the middle child.
Sometimes if you are in a family of four
and you are the second or third oldest,
we would describe you as middle children as well.
But I, in my family, I am definitely the middle child.
I am the middle child of five kids.
Of course, we're all adults now,
but I'm still the middle child and I still act like one.
We should also look at some intermediate phrases
or some intermediate terms for talking about peoples' age.
In particular, I wanna talk about generalizations.
So if you don't know exactly how old someone is,
you might say that they are in their 20s
or they are in their 30s or in their 40s.
So for instance, I have a cousin
and I'm not sure exactly how old he is,
but I know that he's in his 30s.
So when you don't know the exact age of someone,
you can use that term.
We can also be a little more specific.
You could say, "I think he's in his early 30s,"
or you could say, "I think he's in his mid 30s,"
or you could say, "I think he's in his late 30s."
You'll often hear me describe my age
as that I am in my late 40s.
So those are ways that you can be less specific,
where you can talk about age
when you don't know the exact age.
You can also use these generalized terms for age
to talk about yourself.
You can say things like,
"Oh, when I was in my early 30s, I used to go out more."
Or you could say, "Later in life when I am in my 60s,
I am going to relax a little bit more."
So these are all just general terms
that you can talk about your age
or that you can use to talk about the age of someone else
where you don't want to be specific,
or maybe you just don't know what age the person is.
So let's talk about some more advanced phrases
when we are talking about age.
The first phrase I wanna talk about is the phrase
getting on in years.
If you describe someone as getting on in years,
it means that they're getting older.
The second phrase I wanted to talk about is over the hill.
If someone is over the hill,
it usually means they are over the age of 40.
So I'm definitely over the hill.
Another phrase I wanted to look at
is the phrase midlife crisis.
A midlife crisis is when you get around age 40 or 45
and you start to kind of second-guess your life.
You start to wonder if you chose the right career.
Did you choose the right path in life?
And you start to worry about it
and you have a little bit of anxiety about it.
We would call that a midlife crisis.
Another phrase you'll hear in English
is that somebody is turning grey.
You can see that my hair is turning grey.
When we say that someone is turning grey,
we are just simply saying that they are getting older.
When you talk about people who are a lot younger than you,
you can use the general term young people.
So you'll sometimes hear someone say,
"You know, young people these days,
they just aren't as serious as we were when we were young."
And you might also hear people use the word youth.
They might say, "Youth these days just aren't as serious
as we were."
And then on the flip side,
you also will hear people say old people
when referring to people who are seniors or elderly.
So they might say something like,
"Ah, old people drive really slow."
Or, "There are so many old people
at the mall walking every morning."
So just a few more general terms that you might hear.
Another phrase you might hear is the phrase kids these days.
This is something old people say.
Let's say a whole bunch of kids went riding by
on their bicycles, and they were just yelling and screaming
and being disrespectful.
An old person might just say, "Kids these days."
And what they mean by that is,
they don't think kids behave as nicely
or as kindly as they used to.
Kids these days.
Another funny phrase that you might hear
every once in awhile is the phrase,
"When I was a kid,
I had to walk to school uphill both ways."
This is something we sometimes say to be funny.
Sometimes when kids complain about their life,
maybe they complain because the WiFi is too slow
or something else that might seem silly to an older person,
you might just say, "Hey when I was a kid,
I used to have to walk to school uphill both ways."
It's a little bit of a joke,
but it just highlights that kids these days
sometimes complain too much.
And the last phrase I wanted to talk about
is the phrase I can really feel my age
or I can feel my age.
As you get older, when you do things,
especially physical things,
sometimes you are sore the next day.
And we say that we can feel our age.
I started to feel my age when I was in my early 40s,
by the way.
Before that, I used to be able to do all kinds of things
and I rarely ever got sore or felt
like I had overdone it.
But now, I certainly feel my age almost every day.
Well hey, thanks for watching this little English lesson
about how to talk about age in English.
I hope it helped you learn just a little bit more English.
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I hope you're having a good day.
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