Ordinal indicator

[2] In Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Galician, the ordinal indicators º and ª are appended to the numeral depending on whether the grammatical gender is masculine or feminine.

[4] In Spanish, using the two final letters of the word as it is spelled is not allowed,[5] except in the cases of primer (an apocope of primero) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as 1.º but as 1.er, of tercer (an apocope of tercero) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as 3.º but as 3.er, and of compound ordinal numbers ending in primer or tercer.

This ablative desinence happened to be frequently combined with ordinal numerals indicating dates (as in tertio die [written iiio die] "on the third day" or in Anno Domini years, as in anno millesimo [...] ab incarnatione domini nostri Iesu Christi [written an ͂ Mo [...] dm ͂i nri ih ͂u xp ͂i or similarly] "in the thousandth [...] year after the incarnation of our lord Jesus Christ").

Examples:[7] The masculine ordinal indicator º may be confused with the degree sign ° (U+00B0), which looks very similar and which is provided on the Italian and Latin American keyboard layouts.

The masculine ordinal indicator is the shape of a lower-case letter o, and thus may be oval or elliptical, and may have a varying line thickness.

In Basque, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Norwegian, Slovak, Slovene, Turkish, among other languages, a period or full stop is written after the numeral.

There is a problem with autocorrection, mobile editors, etc., which often force a capital initial letter in the word following the ordinal numbers.

With the gradual introduction of the typewriter in the late 19th century, it became common to write them on the baseline in typewritten texts,[17] and this usage even became recommended in certain 20th-century style guides.

French uses the ordinal indicators er and re for the number 1, depending on gender (masculine 1er – premier; feminine 1re – première).

Unlike other Germanic languages, Dutch is similar to English in this respect: the French layout with e used to be popular, but the recent spelling changes now prescribe the suffix ‑e.

However, if the head noun is omitted, the ordinal indicator takes the form of a morphological suffix, which is attached to the numeral with a colon.

In the nominative case, the suffix is ‑nen for 1 and 2, and ‑s for larger numerals: Minä olin 2:nen, ja veljeni oli 3:s 'I came 2nd, and my brother came 3rd'.

This is derived from the endings of the spelled-out ordinal numbers: ensimmäinen, toinen, kolmas, neljäs, viides, kuudes, seitsemäs, etc..

Even native speakers sometimes find it difficult to exactly identify the ordinal suffix, as its borders with the word stem and the case ending may appear blurred.

Exceptions are 20 (fiche) and 40 (daichead), both of which form their ordinals by adding the suffix directly to the cardinal (fichiú and daicheadú).

The ordinals for 1 and 2 may however be given an -e form (förste and andre instead of första and andra) when used about a male person (masculine natural gender), and if so they are written 1:e and 2:e. When indicating dates, suffixes are never used.

Using a full stop as an ordinal indicator is considered archaic, but still occurs in military contexts; for example: 5. komp "5th company".

Numbers in Filipino are preceded by the ordinal prefix ika- or pang- (the latter subject to sandhi; for example, ika-7 or pam-7 "seventh").

In Chinese and Japanese, an ordinal number is prefixed by 第 dì / dai; for example: 第一 "first", 第二 "second".

In Korean, an ordinal number is prefixed by 제 je or suffixed by 번째 beonjjae; for example: 제1 "first", 2번째 "second".