Ordinal numbers in American schools?

[mrelwood]

I recall reading that American schools now approve "fault" ordinal numbers, like 1th, 2th, 3th, ... (instead of 1st, 2nd, 3rd).

I've googled my ass sore but can't find anything related to the news. What I did find was a few dates, like "May 1th", "2th dec" and "March 3th".

So what's up, is my memory from a nightmare or not?

[TheArchitect]

I've not heard of such a thing. No one here uses those. I can't imagine why schools would teach it

[ngarjuna]

I work for a public school district in the US. I don't believe this new format (Nth) is being used anywhere in the city I live.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by TheArchitect

I've not heard of such a thing. No one hear uses those. I can't imagine why schools would teach it

But we have replaced the word here with "hear"! LOL

[LOSER]

Originally Posted by ngarjuna

I work for a public school district in the US.

So do American Schools approve to "this new format (Nth)", or no?

[ngarjuna]

I don't believe so. I think 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Nth is still considered correct.

Since I'm not an educator (not at this job, anyway), I did shoot an email to the superintendent of curriculum to find out for sure. Also, she's involved in a lot of "trendsetting" organizations, so I also asked whether she had ever heard of this new notation and whether or not it seems to be gaining ground (we're in the middle of the mid-west, not exactly the bleeding edge).

I'll let you know when I get some answers.

[Lokasenna]

I really doubt anyone would be brainless enough to try teaching ordinal numbers that way. Even if they did, unless they're also going to teach kids to pronounce them "Firth", "Seconth", and "Thirth", it would never last.

Then again, this IS the country that still thinks water freezing at 32 degrees and 5280 feet to a mile are an efficient system, so you never know.

[ngarjuna]

I can see the logic of it, personally. The biggest complaint that I hear about English is how exceptional and non-standardized it is. Reducing the number of "little special cases" would help greatly in making international English a little less painful for non-speakers.

But yeah, don't count on Americans to make sense when it comes to measuring things. Even the British have given up on Imperial Units (how do you like that for irony).

[Brad]

Logic? Really? I'll 2th that.

Don't wanna be a 3th wheel either.

At the ballgame....It's the top of the 3th inning....runners on 1th and 2th.....the batter hits a single down the 3th base line....


LOL

[Kihoalu]

At the ballgame....It's the top of the 3th inning....runners on 1th and 2th.....the batter hits a single down the 3th base line....

Could you please quit lisping?! (or were you talking Castillian?)

[rbarkhouse]

Firth Of Fifth?

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by Brad

Logic? Really? I'll 2th that.

Don't wanna be a 3th wheel either.

At the ballgame....It's the top of the 3th inning....runners on 1th and 2th.....the batter hits a single down the 3th base line....


LOL

So who's on firth, what's on seconth, I don't know's on thirth?

[ngarjuna]

Superintendent has never heard of this new method, so not only are we not using it, there is no immediate plan to adopt.

I would say it is not widespread if it's in use in the US at all.

[LOSER]

Originally Posted by Brad

Logic? Really? I'll 2th that.

Don't wanna be a 3th wheel either.

At the ballgame....It's the top of the 3th inning....runners on 1th and 2th.....the batter hits a single down the 3th base line....


LOL

Well it would be logical in that you would still pronounce it as first, second, third, fourth ...

So -th would be the ordinal indicator. And not -st, -nd, -rd, -th depending on what ordinal number it is.

Here in Germany ordinal indicator is simple dot behind the number (for everything). So 1. = 1st. While 1 = 1.

French its -er or -e (in some instances if I'm right).
Some countries use the degree symbol (the little o) or a in superscribe. Some have weird indicators and some even have indicators that are different depending on the GENDER of the number, etc...

So while it seems illogical to have a common -th for everything, it indeed is logical (if you look at the -th as an ordinal indicator only rather than an ordinal indicator derived from the real pronounced word for that specific ordinal).

[Mr. Data]

Originally Posted by Brad

Logic? Really? I'll 2th that.

Don't wanna be a 3th wheel either.

At the ballgame....It's the top of the 3th inning....runners on 1th and 2th.....the batter hits a single down the 3th base line....


LOL

But this way your able too wright 2thbrush or so.
Was dizz rong?


-Dayta

[Mr. Data]

Originally Posted by rbarkhouse

Firth Of Fifth?

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

So who's on firth, what's on seconth, I don't know's on thirth?

It gets even harder when it comes to thixth - ööhm or sithxth or whatever.



-Thatha

[Lokasenna]

Originally Posted by LOSER

So while it seems illogical to have a common -th for everything, it indeed is logical (if you look at the -th as an ordinal indicator only rather than an ordinal indicator derived from the real pronounced word for that specific ordinal).

I would argue that deriving the indicator from the pronounced word is quite logical, and anyone who would stumble on it simply isn't familiar with the language in the first place. If you know first, second, third, fourth, I fail to see where the jump to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th could be difficult.

English has tons of exceptions, yes, and I've read that it's one of the more difficult languages to learn for that reason. The way we write ordinals, though, doesn't seem like an exception to me - it's just an abbreviation.

Incidentally, French isn't all that different. First - Premier - 1er, Second - Deuxieme - 2e, Third - Troisieme - 3e, etc. The ordinals are derived from the original word, and the only difference is that English has three exceptions to the standard ending as opposed to one.

[LOSER]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

I would argue that deriving the indicator from the pronounced word is quite logical, and anyone who would stumble on it simply isn't familiar with the language in the first place. If you know first, second, third, fourth, I fail to see where the jump to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th could be difficult.

English has tons of exceptions, yes, and I've read that it's one of the more difficult languages to learn for that reason. The way we write ordinals, though, doesn't seem like an exception to me - it's just an abbreviation.

Incidentally, French isn't all that different. First - Premier - 1er, Second - Deuxieme - 2e, Third - Troisieme - 3e, etc. The ordinals are derived from the original word, and the only difference is that English has three exceptions to the standard ending as opposed to one.

Well I never argued that 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc ... is illogical. I only pointed out that having -th for everything is not illogical when you don't consider the origin of the -th, like Brad seemed to imply it.

[Mr. Data]

Originally Posted by Lokasenna

I would argue that deriving the indicator from the pronounced word is quite logical, and anyone who would stumble on it simply isn't familiar with the language in the first place. If you know first, second, third, fourth, I fail to see where the jump to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th could be difficult.

English has tons of exceptions, yes, and I've read that it's one of the more difficult languages to learn for that reason. The way we write ordinals, though, doesn't seem like an exception to me - it's just an abbreviation.

I (being German too) can follow Losers args there and I'd even go further and say it's kinda illogical. You say "one" for 1 and not "fir", so logically it would be "oneth", you say "two" for 2 and not "seco" and logically this would be "twoth" and you say "three" for 3 and not "thi" and logically it would be "threeth". I can't see where there the abbreviation is, because f.i. "second" is even longer than "twoth". It just comes in when you write numbers instead of words, i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd instead of first, second and third. But this is a cultural grown thing, that hasn't to be logical. In fact, these are the things that keep languages alive in terms of evolving, And so, we, the foreign language speaking people get around with that I think - but logical? No.

I'd say this 1th, 2th 3th thing is part of laziness and indifference against the own language and also because many texts are created automatically nowadays where for numbers wildcards are used. So when the numbers are filled in, there's always a "th" behind them, no matter, whether there's a 1, 2, 3, 5, 21 or whatever in front of it. Well, software could be that intelligent and fill the right "st", "nd" or "rd" in, but it rarely is. And the more these things are seen, the more people get used to them and often they even don't know it's wrong. It goes into the same direction, where people confuse "their" and "there" or "its" and "it's" or "your" and "you're" in writing.

In Germany we have this "declining of culture" as well.



-Data

[ngarjuna]

That's kind of how I see it too, this is an attempt to make an "easy version" of the rule which doesn't correspond to the words as they're actually spoken. From the perspective of people who don't primarily speak English, this seems sensible to me. Yes, we could program stuff to recognize the grammar rules for 1-3 but why bother. Other than the fact that it reflects the phonetics of the pronounced word, it doesn't really add anything beyond that, so it's perfectly acceptable to standardize Nth for various uses.

From the perspective of people who do primarily speak English, particularly people learning to speak/read/write (US schools), it would seem a better choice to reinforce the student's knowledge of the exceptions that they will be expected to know and use (first, second, third) and use the non-standard 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Because unlike writing 2th (which will be obvious and understood by most of the people reading it), asking "Who will go twoeth?" will get you a lot of funny looks.

[Mr. Data]

Originally Posted by ngarjuna

From the perspective of people who don't primarily speak English, this seems sensible to me.

Yes, another thing I stumbled upon when learning English was "go" and "went", 'cos these words don't have really much in common writing- and speaking-wise.
But back to numbers: In Germany we have these illogicalities too. You say for instance twenty-three and in German it is "dreiundzwanzig", which would be three-and-twenty, which in fact doesn't really make sense, because we read from left to right. So why do we say "drei" first? It gets even worse with larger numbers as f.e. 123, which is "einhundertdreiundzwanzig" and would literally translate as "one-hundred-three-and-twenty". Actually we say 1, 3, 2 in German, which is by no means logical to me.

Originally Posted by ngarjuna

From the perspective of people who do primarily speak English, particularly people learning to speak/read/write (US schools), it would seem a better choice to reinforce the student's knowledge of the exceptions that they will be expected to know and use (first, second, third) and use the non-standard 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Because unlike writing 2th (which will be obvious and understood by most of the people reading it), asking "Who will go twoeth?" will get you a lot of funny looks.

Yes, because - as I wrote before - it is part of the culture.



-Data

[Dan]

If you want to speak english, learn english.

It's not like China is making Chinese any easier for non-native speakers to learn?

[LOSER]

Originally Posted by Dan

If you want to speak [E]nglish, learn [E]nglish.

It's not like China is making Chinese any easier for non-native speakers to learn?

Just chill no one is going to change the English language.

Besides do you really think that changing the ordinal indicator would make it anymore easier? I doubt. Besides that would only be a change in writing and not affect speaking at all ...

[Teksonik]

Originally Posted by mrelwood

I've googled my ass sore

That's really disturbing. Is that the 1th time?