This is how we say it – ‘Five of us’

A common mistake I hear when talking to my French-speaking students is when they are talking about the number of people, including themselves, in a given situation.  While in French you might say ‘au repas, on était cinq’, this is not translated into English as ‘at the meal, we were five’. If you say it like this, people might think that you are talking about their ages!  Instead, we use the following sentence structure ‘at the meal, there were five of us.’ So, the next time you and your friends visit a restaurant in an English-speaking country, be prepared to answer the following question from the waiter or waitress, ‘How many of you are there?’ with ‘There are five of us’ (or any other appropriate number 😊).