Group 1: a single word serves as the question word
Chinese (第几)
Dutch (Hoeveelste)
Esperanto (Kioma)
Finnish (manieth)
French (combientième, quantième) [The poster says quantième is very formal and rarely used.]
German (wievielte)
Japanese (何番目)
Kazakh (Нешінші)
Marathi (kitva) [The poster specifically says Hindi probably does not have this word.]
Persian (چندمین)
Group2: a phrase is needed
Russian (какой по счету)
Swedish (vilken ... i ordningen)
Group 3: some logic is needed to deduce the ordinal number, or you ask in a different way, or there's not a general interrogative construct
English
Italian
Spanish [? debated]
4 comments:
In Dutch it's Hoeveelste, in Esperanto it's Kioma. I would be hard pressed to find a good way to say that in English indeed...
Thank you, Joop! I added those two to my language Group 1.
Finnish is actually "monennettako".
Thank you Sir. I searched for "monennettako". But being ignorant of Finnish, I can't read the articles online. If I search for "manieth" instead, I got
http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst7783_How-manieth-.aspx
where people are discussing exactly the problem I'm describing here. Do you mind giving me a link to a page about the usage of "monennettako"? I can read a few languages, but if it's Finnish, I'll rely on Google Translate. Also, what do you think of "manieth"? It's not right? Or it's just the same as "monennettako"? Thanks again!
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