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I want to translate the following Spanish sentence into English:

Tengo menos de treinta años.

By the way the speaker of this Spanish sentence means that he/she is not yet thirty years old. I think in English something like the following might be correct but I can't be sure.

I am younger than thirty years old.

Or

I have less than thirty years of age.

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  • 11
    The blindingly obvious one is "I'm not thirty, yet."
    – Greybeard
    Aug 11, 2022 at 15:07
  • 3
    The colloquial one is I'm pushing 30. Aug 11, 2022 at 16:29

3 Answers 3

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There are a lot of ways to communicate something about your age, and a lot of them depend on the social aspects and pragmatics (the implications of what you say).

Grammatically, in English, they all use 'to be' rather than the usual Romance 'to have'.

From your title question, it seems the social situation is that you are not saying exactly the number of years since your birth. But for reference that would be:

I am 27 years old.

But to say it without the exact age, you'd say something like:

I'm almost thirty.

I'm about thirty.

I'm in my twenties.

I'm in my late twenties.

I'm having a hard time imagining someone naturally saying "I am not yet 30", unless the query were something specific like "We're looking for someone 30 or older? How about you?" and a similar situation would apply to "I am younger than thirty.". You word for word translation "I am less than 30" is, while grammatically correct, and semantically correct, just not how you say it in English, and sounds a bit robotic, and overly mathematical.

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    But if a bunch of twenty-somethings are teasing their friend about soon going over the hill and won’t be able to hang with them anymore the person might say, “Hey, I’m not 30 yet!
    – Jim
    Aug 11, 2022 at 16:34
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    @Jim wait, 30 is "over the hill"? But I'm not even forty yet!
    – BruceWayne
    Aug 12, 2022 at 1:19
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    @BruceWayne - To the teen and early twenties crowd it is. It’s funny how perspective shifts the older one gets. I remember getting dinosaurs in my front yard when I turned 40 and one of my friends gave me a collapsible cane. That was many years ago now and I still don’t feel like I’m over the hill yet…
    – Jim
    Aug 12, 2022 at 2:28
  • "Tengo menos de treinta años" is about as unlikely in Spanish as "I am not yet 30" is in English - the response to a statement such as "Remember Franco" (who died 46 years ago)
    – Henry
    Aug 12, 2022 at 12:53
  • @Henry Ah. Then the best translation that preserves that 'specialness' would be "I am less than thirty" or "I am less than thirty years old". What would be wrong is "I am less than thirty years".
    – Mitch
    Aug 12, 2022 at 13:00
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"I am less than thirty years old" would be the most common way of saying that. Your first suggestion ("I am younger than thirty years old") and the expression in your title ("I am not yet thirty years old") would be correct, too. Your second suggestion would be nonstandard, because in English we generally don't speak of "having" years to indicate an age.

By the way, "years old" may be dropped in any of those.

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    I prefer this translation for two reasons: (1) absolutely agree; far more common than any of the other proposed translations. (2) It preserves the usage of "menos", which directly translates to "less" in English.
    – David
    Aug 12, 2022 at 0:24
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Note that when you speak of age, unlike Romance languages, English uses the verb be, not have. Depending on what you want to stress you could say

I am not yet thirty (but will soon get there)

or

I am still in my twenties (but not for long)

or

I am in my late twenties.

You could also say

I'll soon be thirty/reach the age of thirty.

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  • You're so right about be not have - I am 30, I am six foot, I am here 2 years. Aug 11, 2022 at 13:43
  • 3
    Or go as far as the radical I'm under 30. Aug 11, 2022 at 13:43
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    @YosefBaskin "I am here 2 years" is not idiomatic. One way to say it is "I have been here for 2 years" which still uses "be".
    – CJ Dennis
    Aug 11, 2022 at 22:49

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