6.9 – Talking about Age

First, let’s recall from 1.8 – Stating your Age how we ask and talk about age:

Kolik je ti let? / Kolik je vám let?

We answered this question a long time ago when we talked about ourselves in unit 1. Remember? Let’s review…

To ask someone their age, we ask them:

Kolik je ti let? – informal

Kolik je vám let? – formal

The forms ti and vám are dative forms of ty and vy, so we’re actually asking ‘how many years are to you?’

You answer by using the dative case forms of nouns or pronouns:

Dative of Pronouns

The table below gives the dative forms of personal pronouns next to the nominative forms that we already know:

nominative form	dative form
já	mi, mně
ty	ti
on	mu
ona	jí
my	nám
vy	vám
oni (ony, ona)	jim

Remember that these are going to be in 2nd position, with the exception of the question itself, where they are fossilized in place.

Dative of Nouns

Here is a table with the forms of the dative for nouns (names):

	MA	F
Hard Stem	-ovi Jan → Janovi Petr → Petrovi Honza → Honzovi *masculine names ending in -a take -ovi despite these names following a feminine pattern for other case forms such as acc., gen.,  instr., voc.	-e / -ě Aneta → Anetě Karolína → Karolíně sound changes: k → c, r → ř (also h → z, ch → š, but those are less common in names so won’t be important here). Some examples: Veronika → Veronice Sára → Sáře
Soft Stem	-ovi Lukáš → Lukášovi Tomáš → Tomášovi	-i Lucie → Lucii Marie → Marii

When a name is used, it tends to be put first.

Examples: 

 

	1 rok singular verb	2-4 roky plural verb	5 let singular verb
present tense	Je mu jeden rok. Je jí jeden rok.	Jakubovi jsou dva roky. Jsou mi tři roky. Jsou jí čtyři roky.	Je mi dvacet let. Je ti třicet let. Haně je pět let.

Images used in this document come from these sources.