Now I'm going to talk about how to form ordinal numbers in Turkish so how to say things like first,
second, third, and so on.
We're going to form ordinal numbers in Turkish by taking the word for the number and adding a
the suffix -inci, -ıncı, -uncu, or üncü
directly to it. We'll choose which version of the suffix to use according to the rules of four-way vowel harmony.
Let's see how this works
"Bir"
the Turkish word for one.
We want to say first, we'll simply choose the appropriate version of
this suffix according to the rules of four-way vowel harmony so "birinci"
"Birinci"
first
The Turkish word for to two, "iki"
Because "iki" already ends in a vowel, we don't need one of these buffer vowels,
-i, -ı, -u, and -ü
we'll simply add
-nci...ikinci
Second, "üç"
is the Turkish word for three. If we want to say "third," We'll simply add the appropriate version of the suffix
Üçüncü
third
"Dört" is
the Turkish word for four
The rules of vowel harmony tell us that we should add
-üncü
but
This "t" is going to undergo
consonant alternation
so "forth" is
dördüncü
"Beş" is the Turkish word for five
"Beşinci"
fifth.
Finally
we could go on indefinitely...but we'll say "altı," Turkish word for six
ends in a vowel already, so we'll simply choose the appropriate ending
Altıncı
Sixth
Now if you want to add an ordinal ending
to a Turkish number that is written in more than one word so for example
39 if we want to say
39th
Start with the word for thirty-nine
words for 39
otuz...thirty
dokuz...nine
Otuz dokuz...39 and we'll simply add the appropriate ending
to the end of the final
number of words, so "otuz dokuzuncu"
The thirty-ninth
And this can go on
for as big a number as you can come up with so, for example if we want to say the two thousand five hundred and
twenty-seventh we'll start with
So "iki bin beş yüz yirmi yedi
2,527 and simply add the appropriate version of the ending to the end of the final number word so,
yedi...seven
yedinci
İki bin beş yüz yirmi yedinci
2,527th something.
We can also add these ordinal endings
or, the correct form of the ordinal ending, to the Turkish word
son
meaning "end" or "final" or "last" so
son
sonuncu...the last, final
like "sonuncu kelime"
the final word.
With "birinci" we also have the alternative of
using the Turkish word "ilk" without any additional ordinal ending, simply meaning "first."
"Ilk" meaning "first."
Finally if you want to ask a question
expecting one of these ordinal numbers in the answer, so for example if I want to ask a child, "What grade are you in?"
We'll start with the Turkish
word "kaç"
meaning "how much?"
or "how many?"
We'll actually add a version of this
ordinal ending directly to the question word "kaç" so
Kaçıncı
We want to ask, "what grade are you in?" so,
Kaçıncı sınıftasın?
and the answer might be
"birinci sınıftayım" I'm in the first grade or "beşinci sınıftayım"
I'm in the fifth grade, but we know we are expecting an
ordinal number in our answer because we used "kaçıncı" in our question.