Asking about ages in VietNamese and English

Hi,

It’s so nice to learn more and write when I will go to bed. How do you feel?

In Vietnamese, ages are very important to talk to people that are not in the family. Vietnamese use pronouns in the family to talk to other people like brothers. And we call “đồng bào”.

For older ones, “I” is “em”, “you” is”anh”, “chị”, “bác”.

Younger ones, “I” is “em”, “you” is “anh”, “chị”, “bác”.

The same years old, “tớ/cậu”, “mình/bạn”, “mình/cậu”, “tôi/ông”, “tao/mày”. Up to each context and habit.

So if you don’t know their ages, you can call them that are “anh”, “chị”, “bác”

1. Anh cho em hỏi, anh năm nay bao tuổi ạ ?
2. Chị cho em hỏi, chị năm nay bao tuổi ạ ?
3. Bác cho em hỏi, bác năm nay bao tuổi ạ?

“ạ” in Vietnamese was showed respect to someone. It’s Vietnam’s culture. Because older ones have many more experiences than younger.

In English, to ask for ages:

How old are you ?

I’m… years old

or

I’m… years old. And you ?

There are other ways to ask in Vietnamese, and I think they are common phrases that don’t have a mistake and respect to someone.

Thank you for following this post!

P.S: You can read more VietNamese version:

Cách hỏi tuổi trong tiếng Việt và tiếng Anh

This work by Tung Le is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International