If you want to ask someone when he was born, you say "В каком году ты родился?" If you want to ask a girl you say "В каком году ты родилась?" Translated more literally it is, "In which year were you born?"

Note that you use prepositional case here with В, and that год goes to году in prepostional case.

When answering, you need to use masculine ordinal numbers in prepositional case. So to say you were born in 1979 you would say, "Я родился в тысяча девятьсот семьдесят девятом году." This is like saying "I was born in the one thousand, nine hundred, seventy nineth year."

Я родился в тысяча девятьсот семьдесят девятом году. В каком году ты родился?

And now for Russian-Spanish cognates.

Here is the false cognate of the day:
  собор ≠ sabor
  собор = catedral

And a real cognate:
  симпатичный = simpático

Note that neither симпатичный nor simpático mean sympathetic in English.

2 comments:

lafalda said...

yay, you started the russian/spanish cognate thing. i'm so glad. but you should add that "simpatichnii and simpatico" don't mean sympathetic in english:)
sorry, i have too much time on my hands

Lance Fisher said...

Done. I have too much time on my hands too. Actually not really, and I bet you don't either. I think it's just attention to detail, as we used to call it in the Air Force.