Learn How to Talk about Age in English! Also, Happy Birthday to Me! 🍰

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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Thanks for watching.

I hope you're having a good day.

And if you have a little extra time,

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