'ordinal' or 'cardinal'

Question

While I was learning about the ordinal numbers, I saw this on your page:

Formal Usage: Ordinal numbers are most commonly used up to the 10th. The 11th and higher are fairly uncommon and considered formal. For larger numbers, it is actually more common to just use the ordinal number, especially in speech.

Durante el siglo 19... (During the 19th century...)

In that last sentence, should it say cardinal number, rather than ordinal?

Answer 1

I looked it up to confirm. Cardinal refers to the actual number, Ordinal refers to "first", "second", etc.

So yeah, I guess cardinal makes more sense.

Answer 2

Hello lethalillie

Welcome to the SpanishDict forum

Yes, well noticed! From the context, I would say that you are correct in your observation. it should say cardinal instead of ordinal .

It was probably just an oversight on the part of the writer!

I will check with my native Spanish teacher next time I have a class with her on Skype and see if she agrees about the redundancy of the use of ordinal numbers beyond (the) tenth except for formal situations

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Thank you for drawing it to our attention