I have wondered why the English language with the greatest number of words of all the languages in the world is missing many words from her vocabulary. One such word is how manieth. You know when you ask someone "how many children do you have?", he will answer "three" or any other number. The number that you get for 'how many' is a cardinal number. But if you want to get an ordinal number like third, tenth, sixteenth as answer, what question word will you use in English? To tell the truth, there is no ordinal number question word in English.
Some people in India are said to ask this question: "What's the ordinal number of Dr Manmohan Singh as the prime minister of India?" Some others: "What's the rank of Dr Manmohan Singh among the prime ministers of India?" But they do not have the flavour of the natural English style.
An Oxford professor has said that one can use what number in speech as an ordinal number question word:
What number prime minister of India is Dr Manmohan Singh?
What number president of America was Abraham Lincoln?
The same professor says that the following type of sentence can be used in written English:
Where in the chronological order of prime ministers does Dr Manmohan Singh come?
I really wish there was a word like 'how manieth' or 'how manyeth' in the English language.
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