בן כמה אתה?
“בן כמה אתה?” (бэн кама ата?) — how old are you? in Hebrew. Phrase, level A1. Literally "a son of how many are you": age in Hebrew is asked through ben and bat. To a woman — bat kama at?, politely — ben kama atem? In a live sentence: “בן כמה אתה? אני בן עשרים.” — How old are you? I am twenty. Written with the characters ב, כ, מ, ה, א, ת, ה. A word from the everyday Hebrew course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Hebrew | בן כמה אתה? |
| Read in Latin letters | бэн кама ата? |
| Translation | how old are you? |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
Literally "a son of how many are you": age in Hebrew is asked through ben and bat. To a woman — bat kama at?, politely — ben kama atem?
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- בן כמה אתה? אני בן עשרים.бэн кама ата? ани бэн эсрим.How old are you? I am twenty.
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “how old are you?” in Hebrew?
«בן כמה אתה?», read “бэн кама ата?”. In a live sentence: “בן כמה אתה? אני בן עשרים.” — How old are you? I am twenty. Phrase, level A1; written with the characters ב, כ, מ, ה, א, ת, ה.
How is “בן כמה אתה?” written in Latin letters?
бэн кама ата? This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Literally "a son of how many are you": age in Hebrew is asked through ben and bat. To a woman — bat kama at?, politely — ben kama atem? A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.