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This is it, pansit!

GRAMMARAMA!

On Thursday, I talked about the importance of knowing how to effectively translate your thoughts from your mother tongue to English if you're a non-native English speaker aspiring to sound like a local and left you with a cliffhanger. Sorry about that. How do you say, 'pang-ilan ka sa magkakapatid?' in English? Like I always say, we should avoid doing our translations word for word and instead work on doing them sentence for sentence until it becomes a knee-jerk reaction, taking our time if we must. Do it slowly but surely, especially if you're only at the start of your journey. Rome wasn't built in a day. Anyway, this is it, pansit. There are two ways to ask this question in a colloquial way. The simplest one is to first ask if whom you're talking to has siblings. And if he says yes, just proceed to ask: 'So, which one are you?' Another way, which I would say is more formal and less colloquial, is to ask: 'What's your sibling order?' Mystery solved. You're welcome.

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