Segundo, tercero, cuarto, quinto....

Question

What does the symbol mean beside a number such as 2nd, 3rd, etc? It looks like a small 0. It is used in on of the lessons I was taking here in Spanishdict.com. I am sure it is used to specify ordinal numbers vs. cardinal numbers, but just curious. Will be happy to learn this.

Answer 1

1º, 2º,3º and so on... Beside we have 1ª, 2ª, 3ª, 4ª... when it´s the femenine form....

I mean, it´s the way we have to specify that it is an ordinal number - Peinadin, Jul 21, 2011

Oops. Didn't mean to do that. - 0074b507, Jul 21, 2011

"feminine" :-) - cristalino, Jul 21, 2011

Answer 2

It is like in English when you write tiny ST for first or the tiny ND for second... I guess it's a tiny O because like in English it is the ending letters.

Answer 3

delete...already mentioned.

It can also be superscript "a" rather than "o" if the noun being modified is feminine rather than masculine. (like with persona in verb conjugations). It is the same as using primera (1ª), rather that primero (1º), segunda (2ª), rather than segundo (2º), tercera (3ª), rather than tercero (3º), etc.)

1ª,2ª,3ª.....

Answer 4

But these "alt" functions will only work with a computer that has a separate number keyboard off to the right, right? As opposed to the number keys right above qwerty? - cristalino

There was a < sup> and < /sup> tag and, as I understand it, it has not been deprecated. But it doesn't seem to work in this editior.

< a style="font-size:75%;vertical-align:super;color:red">a< /a> is a close approximation.

1a

1o

Answer 5

You can use Alt+0186 (º) to type the masculine ordinal indicator.

Alt+0170 for the feminine "a" superscript - 0074b507, Jul 21, 2011

But these "alt" functions will only work with a computer that has a separate number keyboard off to the right, right? :) As opposed to the number keys right above qwerty? - cristalino, Jul 21, 2011

That's correct. Alt codes aren't good methods for laptops, especially notebooks. - 0074b507, Jul 22, 2011