Learn Italian: Questo scheletro ha circa un milione di anni. - This skeleton is about one million years old.

Questo scheletro ha circa un milione di anni.

This skeleton is about one million years old.

Breakdown of Questo scheletro ha circa un milione di anni.

Questions & Answers about Questo scheletro ha circa un milione di anni.

Why doesn't this sentence use "fa" since it's talking about a million years in the past?

The word fa means "ago" and is used to talk about when an event happened (for example, un milione di anni fa means "a million years ago"). This sentence isn't describing a past event; it's simply stating the skeleton's current age. Therefore, we don't use fa here.

Do we use "avere" to talk about the age of objects?

Yes! You likely remember using avere (to have) to state your own age, like ho vent'anni (I am twenty). In Italian, you use this exact same structure for the age of animals, buildings, or ancient artifacts. To Italians, the skeleton literally "has" about a million years.

Why is there a "di" in "un milione di anni"? I thought we didn't use "di" with numbers.

In Italian, the words for million (milione) and billion (miliardo) are actual nouns, so they require di (of) before the thing they are counting. For smaller numbers like hundred (cento) or thousand (mille), you just put the number directly before the noun without di.

Can I put "circa" at the very end of the sentence?

No. In English, you might say "It's a million years old, roughly" or "...or so," but in Italian, circa (about/approximately) generally needs to go right before the number or quantity it modifies. That is why it sits right before un milione.