Thread: Expressing age.

Originally Posted by Pravit

Originally Posted by TronDD

How do you express age?

For example:

I am 24.
Are you 18?
How old are you?
My car is 34 years old.

I'm making a wild guess that it's not a direct translation. In English, we often drop the "years old". What about in Russian?

Tim.

It's usually expressed by the dative and then the number of years. If the number ends(or is) 1, then it is год. If it is 2,3,4, it is года. If it is 5 or above, it is лет. Don't ask why

Because 2, 3, 4 are special in Russian. Compare "2, 3, 4 стола" and "5, 6, 7, ... столов". The former uses the ancient "двойственное число" and the latter "множественное число". Even though there is only one plural in modern Russian. Recall the insanity of the "distributive" по.