Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 July 11

= July 11 =

resynthesis of ordinal numbers
(I thought Ordinal number (linguistics) might address this. Nope.)

In Standard French, the Latin forms of the ordinals (above 1) have been replaced by more analytic forms with the suffix –ième, which I guess generalizes the Latin –ēsimum of '20th' and up. Spanish and Italian, I believe, have not made such a replacement. So – I hope this question isn't too broad to be interesting – what other languages are known to have (independently of each other) replaced old ordinal words with more transparent forms? —Tamfang (talk) 08:12, 11 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Modern English has imposed a uniformity of "-th" endings (other than on "first", "second", and "third") which did not exist in Old English: 5th was fifta, 6th was siexta, 11th was enleofta, 12th was twelfta. Also, the modern "-teenth" ending was then -teoþa (without "n"). These are early West Saxon forms (there was various dialectal variation).  I bet German zweite is also an analogical reformulation... AnonMoos (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Note that first ("foremost") has replaced the original erst (still found in erstwhile), while second is Latin for "following", and third, like through, has undergone a metathesis where the arr has changed position in relation to the vowel; compare those words to the German dritte and durch with the same meanings. μηδείς (talk) 17:07, 11 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Like French, Romanian ordinal numbers are regular (or transparent) starting with 2nd (al doilea / a doua, al treilea / a treia, al patrulea / a patra, al cincilea / a cincea, ...).
 * All forms of Romansch follow the Latin pattern up to 4th (quart), but (unlike Latin, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, ...) become regular/transparent starting with 5th (tschingavel / tschunavel / tschentgavel / tschinchevel, sisavel / seisavel / sesevel /sesavel, settavel / siatavel / seatavel / settevel). The same applies to Catalan: quart, but then cinquè, sisè, setè, .... ---Sluzzelin talk  19:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)