Thread: sense and nonsense with negation

Originally Posted by krwright

Is this the same principal for expressing "I was (age) years old."

You don't say "Мне был 15 лет", but "Мне было 15 лет". Is that correct?

Exactly!

Literally, it is like "It was 15 years to me".

But there's another example:

Я был пятнадцатилетним парнем. = I was a 15-years-old guy. Now "я" is a subject, and therefore we say "Я был".