Learn how to ask about someone's age
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| Geia, legomai Chrissi. Hi everybody! I’m Chrissi. |
| Welcome to GreekPod101.com’s “Ελληνικά σε 3 λεπτά”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Greek. |
| In the last lesson, we learned the main usage of the verb eimai, which means “to be” in Greek. |
| In this lesson, we are going to learn another basic usage of the verb eimai - we will use it to talk about your age. |
| It’s normal for young people in Greece to ask each other’s age. Of course, people over 30 don’t do it that often but still, it is not considered rude. |
| If someone asks you Poso chronon eiste? it means “How old are you?” in formal Greek |
| [slowly] Poso chronon eiste? |
| In informal Greek, it would be Poso chronon eisai? |
| [slowly] Poso chronon eisai? |
| Now you have to answer with your age! As you noticed from the question, in Greek you use the “to be” verb. |
| Here are some examples. |
| “I am 18” - Eimai deka okto chronon |
| “I am 20” - Eimai eikosi chronon |
| “I am 25” - Eimai eikosi pente chronon |
| “I am 40” - Eimai saranta chronon |
| Can you see what is happening here? We start with the basic, present form of the verb “to be”, eimai –we don’t use the pronoun because you can understand from the context. This, by the way, is not in any way rude and it can be used even in very formal speech. Then we add the number of the years – deka okto or “eighteen”, eikosi or “twenty” and so on – and then the word chronon which means “years”. If we want to be really formal, instead of chronon we can say eton; this also means “years” in polite Greek. As for numbers, we’ve talked a lot about them in previous lessons – you remember them, right? |
| [slowly] Eimai deka okto chronon |
| Sometimes young Greek people won’t ask your age directly, but instead, will ask your birth year. |
| You might hear this question in an informal situation- |
| Tou pote eisai? |
| [slowly] Tou pote eisai? |
| This literally means “Of which year are you?” |
| You just have to answer using the two last digits of your birth year- Such as Eimai tou ogdonta ennea which would mean “I am of 89.” |
| Now it’s time for Chrissi’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. Eimai tou dyo chiliades; we haven’t talked about numbers that big yet but “two thousand” is dyo chiliades, so keep that in mind! |
| In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age and birthyear using the verb eimai. Next time we’ll learn how to use another useful verb, echo, which means “to have” so we can discuss possessions. Do you want to know how to say that you have a nice car? I'll show you how in the next lesson! |
| Tha ta ksanapoume sto epomeno mathima! |
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