Lesson 023. How Old Are You?

This lesson is about asking “how old are you?” question in Chinese. There are different ways of asking the question “how old are you?” in Chinese, it depends on the age of the person you are talking to. Asking a child is different from asking a person of your age or an elderly person. Buy your friend a birthday cake and sing a “Happy Birthday Song” in Chinese! Find out what animal are you according to Chinese Lunar calendar, etc. Please sign up and become a registered subscriber to download ALL 276+ audio lessons with full PDF transcripts and worksheets.

2 comments

  1. Richard Finkel says:

    Hello Sergio,

    I have enjoyed your podcasts very much and learned a great deal in a short time!

    My question is why do you write and say duo as a 2nd tone word in the question duo2 da4? The Chinese dictionaries I have show the phrase duo1 da4 with duo in the first tone.

    Richard

  2. Nihao Richard, duo1 may change it’s tone just like some other words, e.g. number 1 “yi1” or the negation “bu4”. It’s not compulsory for “duo1” and you can still say duo1da4, and the dictionaries will also show duo1da4 because they just take the default tones for duo1, which is the first tone and da4 in the fourth tone, however, in the spoken Mandarin Chinese you will hear duo1 changing to duo2 in duo2da4-how big, how old. Hope this helps.

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