Ordinal numbers - why so complicated?
A Farsi speaker on another Yahoo group of which I am a member - this one for folks who get together here in Vancouver to chat in French - created the following poll for members of the group:
"Will you be able to attend the meet up
on Wedensday November 30'th? Where do
you prefer it to be?
o Yes, Coppa Joes (4'th+Alma)
o Yes, Kits Coffee Company (4'th+Yew)
o Yes, Cafe deux Soleil, 2096 Commercial Drive
o No, I am not attending meetup at this date. "
Besides the error in the date (it's a Tuesday, not a Wednesday), the misspelling of "Wednesday" and the grammar errors in the fourth option, something interesting that caught my eye was the fact that he had apparently not learned the English convention for writing ordinal numbers when the actual number is used instead of the word. This got me thinking about how unwieldy this convention is in English.
I don't know what this convention would be in Farsi, but I know that in other languages it is quite simple and uniform: In German, you just put a period after the number: erste =1. zweite = 2. dritte = 3.; in Spanish, it's always an "o": primero = 1o segundo = 2o trito = 3o; in French, it's almost always -e: première = 1e deuxième = 2e troisième = 3e.
So why is it so complicated in English? Imagine what a headache it must be for those learning English to remember 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th! And just when they think they're home free, along come 21st, 22nd, & 23rd. Mon dieu!
posted by Laura Blumenthal @ 4:50 p.m.
4 Comments:
In much of Europe they just write 3 November. In Turkey as well (they don't use an ordinal at all in that case). When you need an ordinal, you use a period like in German.
Hi Bob, and thanks for your comment.
I wasn't talking only about writing dates - you'll notice that the writer made the same mistake when he wrote the name of the avenue (4th Avenue). Would that be "3. cadde" in Turkish?
Hey Laura
In French, “premier” should be abbreviated as “1er” and “première” as “1re”. For other numbres, a single “e” is added like you said (2e, 3e, 56789e, etc.).
A lot of people ignore this rule and write for instance “deuxième” as “2ème”, more rareley “2me”. The mistake is so common that googling for “le 3ème homme” gives more hits than “le 3e homme”.
Interesting - thanks for posting, JX!
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