LESSON NOTES

Learn Dutch in Three Minutes #13

Talking About Your Age

CONTENTS
2 Grammar

# 13
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GRAMMAR

The focus of this lesson is talking about your age in Dutch

Topic 1: How to use the verb "to be" to talk about age

Sentence from the lesson:

Hoe oud ben jij?
"How old are you?"

1. It's normal for young people in the Netherlands to ask each other's ages. But of
course, it might be risky to ask people over 25! If someone asks you Hoe oud ben jij?
just know that it means "How old are you?" in Dutch. Now you have to answer with
your age! In Dutch, you use the same verb we learned in the two previous lessons,
zijn, "to be."

2. Here are some examples:

Ik ben achttien.
"I am 18."
Ik ben twintig.
"I am 20."
Ik ben vijfentwintig.
"I am 25."
Ik ben veertig.
"I am 40."
Can you see what's happening here? We started with the sentence Ik ben achttien, "I
am 18"

3. Ik ben means "I am." This is the conjugated version of zijn. Achttien is "18." We
learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7. Sometimes, Dutch people add two
more words to this sentence to indicate that they are explicitly talking about age and
not something else. You might hear Dutch people adding the words jaar oud after the
age. The word jaar means "years," and oud means "old." Ik ben twintig jaar oud. "I'm
20 years old." But please pay attention: in Dutch, we most often use the singular form
of jaar, so we literally say "year old" instead of "years old." Ik ben vierendertig jaar oud
is "I am 34 years old."

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Language Tip

If you are asked your age but don't want to tell the person asking your age, you can simply
say that "That's a secret." In Dutch, that's: Dat is een geheim.

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