How do you say to turn years old?
How do you say to turn sixteen years old in Spanish?
4 Answers
to turn sixteen
Cumplir 16 años de edad
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When one thinks about it, the English phrase makes little sense. You turned over in bed (upon waking up) and discovered that you were sixteen? Had you woken up without turning over in bed would you still be fifteen? "turned" in the sense of "turn a corner" (achieve a significant milestone)? But we can say this about any age. They can't all be significant milestones! Is there something especially meaningful in the transition from 36 to 37 or 48 to 49, etc?
Perhaps the parallel is being drawn with cooking a hamburger. At sixteen you are partially cooked (on one side) ("half baked") and now need to have the maturation process completed. Thus you need to be "turned over" to finish your education.
Perhaps better to consider the English expression "turned xx" as being illogical and simply meaning "arrived at some age" / "completed some number of years.
Acabo de cumplir dieciseis años. I have just turned sixteen years old. Cumplir años: El año pasado cumplí 73 años. Este año he cumplido 74 años. El año que viene voy a cumplir 75 años. Que rapido van los años.
It helps if you don't think of it as "turning X years old" but as "completing X years". The Spanish way of saying it is more sensible, I think.
