Kolmekümneaastane

Kolmekümneaastane is Estonian for “thirty-year-old.” It is an adjective used to describe a person who has reached the age of thirty and is typically placed before a noun, as in kolmekümneaastane inimene or kolmekümneaastane mees. In everyday speech, many speakers also use the phrase kolmkümmend aastat vana to express the same idea.

The term is formed by combining the numeral for thirty with the suffix -aastane, which marks age. It is declined like other -ane adjectives in Estonian, so kolmekümneaastane can appear in different cases and numbers (for example, kolmekümneaastase mehega for “with a thirty-year-old man,” kolmekümneaastased for plural). The standard spelling is kolmekümneaastane.

Usage notes: kolmekümneaastane is most common in written Estonian, in formal or descriptive contexts such as demographic descriptions, profiles, or biographical notes. In casual speech, speakers often prefer kolmkümmend aastat vana, which is more colloquial but equally clear. The compound form kolmekümneaastane is typically used when the age qualifier directly modifies a noun (kolmekümneaastane inimene, kolmekümneaastane naine).

See also: related age descriptors follow the same pattern, such as kahekümneaastane (twenty-year-old) and neljakümneaastane (forty-year-old). In Estonian, age adjectives with -aastane are part of standard descriptive language and are widely understood across dialects.