Speaking English - How to talk about your birthplace and birthday

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to learn how to ask and answer

questions related to when you were born, alright?

Not that you're asked this question every day but if you are, then at least you'll be

prepared to know how to answer it, alright?

So this is what you can say, but before we get to the answer, let's stop for a minute

and ask the question.

What is the question?

The question could be, where were you born?

Where were you born, right?

The mistake that students make at times is to say, where you born, alright?

You can't use it like that because the verb is "to be born", right?

So you have to say, I was born, you were born, he was born, she was born, they were born,

we were born and so on, okay?

So the question again, where were you born, right?

The answer to that might be, I was born, right, again, not I born, but I was born in Kabul,

right, in Afghanistan.

So when you say the city, you'll use the preposition "in" and very important again, to use the

verb "to be" before you use "born", right?

I was born in Kabul.

I was born in Tokyo.

When you give the name of the city, you use the preposition "in", alright?

If you're giving the name of the country, you could say, I was born in China or I was

born in India, right?

That's when you're discussing the place.

When we're talking about the time, it's very unlikely that people are going to ask you

at what time you were born, but if it should ever happen, then you'll be prepared, right?

So you could say, I was born at 5.30 in the morning.

Again, with a precise time, we use the preposition "at".

I was born on September 25th.

If you're talking about one day or one date, then we use the preposition "on".

I was born on September 25th.

Or if you're giving just the year, then you would say, I was born in 1975, for example.

If you were giving the complete date, you would say something like this, I was born

on September 25th, 1975.

So again, to review the questions, where were you born?

Or when were you born, right?

Answers, I was born in Tokyo on September 25th.

I was born in India in 1975, and so on, alright?

So if you'd like to do a little quiz on this lesson, which is always helpful, even when

we think that we understand something, it's always really nice to do a little review just

to make sure, and you can do this quiz by going to our website, www.engvid.com.

That's all for now.

Talk to you later.

Bye for now.