How do you say 26th?
I've been learning Spanish for a few years now, but I don't think I ever learned how to say 26th.
12 Answers
vienteseis.
¡ay! lo siento, pero yo no se como decir 26th.
Hi Daniel
Going back 35 years on my linguaphone course, that's in 1973, they made a comment on the ordinal number list as follows.
Ordinal numbers other than the lower numbers and "round" numbers are little used in the ordinal form, being replaced instead by the appropriate number from the cardinal series.
It looks like SLP2008 is busy right now, so I'll go ahead and try my own translations.
He was the twenty-sixth runner to cross the line.
ÿl cruzó la linea en el 26 (veintiséis) lugar.
Of the 30 reasons given above, the twenty-sixth is the one I disagree with.
Entre la 30 razones dadas arriba, no estoy de acuerdo con el número 26.
He died on his twenty-sixth birthday.
Murió en su 26 (veintiséis) cumpleaños.
From my experience, this is how native Spanish speakers deal with such ordinal numbers. So, while there is indeed a way to express any ordinal number in Spanish, in most contexts the cardinal number (greater than ten) will be used.
Gracias Gustavo
Hace treinta y cinco años, se podia decir vigésimo sesto. ¿Es acertado en la actualidad'
Yes, I have seen such ordinals in very formal writing, too.
So, how would you say the following?
He was the twenty-sixth runner to cross the line.
Of the 30 reasons given above, the twenty-sixth is the one I disagree with.
He died on his twenty-sixth birthday.
I think I know how to say them, but I'd like to hear your take, since you have near-native fluency.
How? Because it's not English, and the rules are different. Spanish speakers just don't use ordinal numbers like this in everyday speech or writing. (Although SLP2008 has given you the technically correct answer, I stand by what I said.) Give us the exact context of your question, and we'll be able to tell you how it would be said in Spanish.
Another example of such differences between languages is the use of fractions. We routinely say things like one-eighth and five-thirty-seconds in English, but Romance languages typically do not use fractions beyond half and quarter. I remember asking my best friend, who is French, how to say in French that I only had an eighth of a tank of gas left, and he couldn't answer, because that's not how they would say it in French. Of course, there is a word for one-eighth in French, but French people just don't say it that way.
It is these differences that make studying foreign languages so interesting to me.
I think that is veinte sexto
I'm looking for ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers. How can they only go up to tenth'
If you are trying to say it like first, second, third
They usually only go to tenth
and the rest they say el numero veintiséis etc
Vente-seis...vente-siete...vente ocho...
