Speaking English - How to talk about your birthplace and birthday

182,616 views ・ 2011-05-04

Learn English with Rebecca


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to learn how to ask and answer
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questions related to when you were born, alright?
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Not that you're asked this question every day but if you are, then at least you'll be
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prepared to know how to answer it, alright?
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So this is what you can say, but before we get to the answer, let's stop for a minute
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and ask the question.
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What is the question?
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The question could be, where were you born?
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Where were you born, right?
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The mistake that students make at times is to say, where you born, alright?
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You can't use it like that because the verb is "to be born", right?
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So you have to say, I was born, you were born, he was born, she was born, they were born,
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we were born and so on, okay?
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So the question again, where were you born, right?
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The answer to that might be, I was born, right, again, not I born, but I was born in Kabul,
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right, in Afghanistan.
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So when you say the city, you'll use the preposition "in" and very important again, to use the
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verb "to be" before you use "born", right?
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I was born in Kabul.
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I was born in Tokyo.
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When you give the name of the city, you use the preposition "in", alright?
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If you're giving the name of the country, you could say, I was born in China or I was
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born in India, right?
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That's when you're discussing the place.
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When we're talking about the time, it's very unlikely that people are going to ask you
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at what time you were born, but if it should ever happen, then you'll be prepared, right?
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So you could say, I was born at 5.30 in the morning.
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Again, with a precise time, we use the preposition "at".
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I was born on September 25th.
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If you're talking about one day or one date, then we use the preposition "on".
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I was born on September 25th.
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Or if you're giving just the year, then you would say, I was born in 1975, for example.
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If you were giving the complete date, you would say something like this, I was born
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on September 25th, 1975.
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So again, to review the questions, where were you born?
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Or when were you born, right?
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Answers, I was born in Tokyo on September 25th.
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I was born in India in 1975, and so on, alright?
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So if you'd like to do a little quiz on this lesson, which is always helpful, even when
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we think that we understand something, it's always really nice to do a little review just
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to make sure, and you can do this quiz by going to our website, www.engvid.com.
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That's all for now.
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Talk to you later.
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Bye for now.
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