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Lesson Transcript

Hej, jeg hedder [name]. Hi everybody! I’m [name].
Welcome to DanishClass101.com’s “Dansk på tre minutter”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Danish.
In the last two lessons, you learned the main usages of the verb at være, which means “to be” in Danish.
In this lesson, you are going to learn a third practical usage of this verb. We will use at være to talk about your age.
It’s normal for young people in Denmark to ask each other’s ages. Of course, it might be risky to ask people over 25!
If someone asks you Hvor gammel er du? just know that it means “How old are you?” in Danish.
[slowly] Hvor gammel er du?
Now you have to answer with your age! In Danish, you use the same verb we learned in the two previous lessons, at være, which means “to be.”
Here are some examples.
“I am 18” is Jeg er atten.
“I am 20” is Jeg er tyve.
“I am 25” is Jeg er femogtyve.
“I am 40” is Jeg er fyrre.
Can you see what is happening here? We started with the sentence Jeg er atten, meaning “I am 18”
Jeg er means “I am”. This is the conjugated version of at være.
Atten is “18”. We learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7.
[slowly] Jeg er atten.
Sometimes Danes add two more words to this sentence to indicate that they are explicitly talking about age and not something else.
So you might hear Danes adding the words år gammel after the age like this -
Jeg er tyve år gammel
[slowly] Jeg er tyve år gammel
The word år means “years,” and gammel means “old.” Let’s look at the sentence again.
Jeg er fireogtredive år gammel
[slowly] Jeg er fireogtredive år gammel
“I am 34 years old.”
Now it’s time for [name]’s Insights.
If you are asked your age but don’t want to tell the person asking your age, you can simply say that “It’s a secret”. In Danish that is-
Det er en hemmelighed.
[slowly]Det er en hemmelighed.
In this lesson, you learned how to talk about your age using at være. Next time we’ll learn how to use the verb at have, meaning “to have” for talking about possessions.
I'll be waiting for you in the next Dansk på tre minutter lesson.
På gensyn!

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