Learn how to ask about someone's age
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| Cześć! Jestem Joanna. Hi! I’m Joanna. |
| Welcome to PolishPod101.com’s “Polski w 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Polish. |
| In the last two lessons, we learned the main usages of the verb być, which means “to be” in Polish. |
| In this lesson, we are going to learn one basic usage of the verb mieć, which means “to have”. In this lesson, we will use this verb to talk about your age. |
| If someone asks you Ile masz lat? it would mean “how old are you?” |
| [slowly] Ile masz lat? |
| Please remember that this is an informal question. In Poland we don’t really ask adults about their age. Only after becoming friends with them is it ok to ask this question. |
| Now you have to answer with your age! To do this in Polish you use the verb mieć, “to have”. |
| Here are some examples. |
| “I am 18” - Mam osiemnaście lat. |
| “I am 20” - Mam dwadzieścia lat. |
| “I am 25” - Mam dwadzieścia pięć lat. |
| “I am 40” - Mam czterdzieści lat. |
| As you can see it’s a very simple type of sentence. Let’s have a closer look: |
| mam means “I have”. This is the conjugated version of mieć. |
| osiemnaście is “18”. We learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7, so I hope you remember them. |
| And then we just add lat, which means “years”. |
| [slowly] Mam osiemnaście lat. |
| There’s a chance you can also hear the following question - Który jesteś rocznik? |
| [slowly] Który jesteś rocznik? |
| It literally means “of which year are you?” Then you have to tell the person asking the year you were born in. We are quite lazy with saying big numbers, so we usually try to make it as short as possible. For example, if you were born in 1985, you would just say ‘85. Just use the last 2 digits. |
| Let’s practice that. |
| Let’s say that you were born in 1990 and someone asks you Który jesteś rocznik? |
| Your answer will be: dziewiećdziesiąty. |
| If you were born in 1976, you will use the last two digits again, saying siedemdziesiąty szósty. Only if you were born after 2000 do you have no choice but to say the whole year. |
| Now it’s time for Joanna’s Insights. |
| Please remember that asking about someone’s age is only ok if the person you’re talking with is young or you’re friends. Adults usually don’t ask this kind of question. Here’s some very important information for men - don’t ask women about their age. Very often even a girl in her twenties might feel uneasy if you ask this kind of question. So if you want to show good manners, don’t ask women about their age. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age and birth date. Next time we’ll learn how to use mieć for talking about possessions. |
| See you in the next Polski w 3 minuty lesson. |
| Do zobaczenia! |
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