贵庚啊？how old are you ?
true story 真实故事
i remember one summer i taught some classes at a middle school in the south of china.during a break i was chatting with one of the students and asked him how old he was .he responded by saying what sounded like,“i'm forty.”i couldn't be-lieve it ! i corrected him at once,“i think you mean'i'm fourteen'”.he responded，“that's what i said.”
我记得有一年夏天我在中国南部的一所中学上课。休息时我和一学生聊天问他多大了。他的回答听起来像:“i'm forty.(我四十了)”。我简直难以置信，马上纠正他:“我想你应该是说:i'm fourteen.(我十四岁了)”。他说:“这正是我说的。”
知识扩展
分析提示：
the problem behind this student's funny mistake was due to wrong pro-nunciation.take a look at how we read the following numbers so you don't make the same mistake:
foutteen 十四
fifteen 十五
sixteen 十六
seventeen 十七
eighteen 十八
nineteen 十九
forty 四十
fifty 五十
sixty 六十
seventy 七十
eighty 八十
ninety 九十
如何委婉地表达年龄：
if you don't want to give your specific age，you can always use the following:
in my teens十几岁
in my twenties 二十几岁
in my thirties三十几岁