How is this question framed? (rather slickly)

Glotal   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 15:42 GMT
Let us say that i am the 4th child of my father and someone wants to know that, how do you think a question should be framed?

In my mother tongue it is easy and kind of translates to

Howmanyeth kid of your father you are?
Deborah   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 18:37 GMT
How about, "Where does your birth occur in the chronological listing of your father's offspring?"
Deborah   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 20:29 GMT
Glotal, the first time I read your post I completely missed the part about "howmanyeth" being sort of a translation of a word in your language. What's your language, and what's the word?
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 20:35 GMT
Of course, another, more informal way to phrase such would be "Which of your father's kids are you?", but that has the disadvantage here of not specifying exactly that the "which" part is necessarily in terms of birth order.
Deborah   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 20:37 GMT
Yes, but it has the advantage of having only 7 words rather than 13, and not sounding preposterous.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 20:42 GMT
Tis true; most native English speakers would probably laugh, or nearly laugh, if I asked them such using the version you proposed above, Deborah. ;)
Joanne   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:01 GMT
"How many older siblings do you have?"
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:08 GMT
Or rather, "How many younger siblings do you have?", which should give one's birth order, if one is using zero-based counting, and one's birth order minus one, if one is using one-based counting.
Joanne   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:17 GMT
If you just ask how many younger siblings this guy has, you wouldn't know his birth order. For example, if he says he's got two younger siblings, he could have nineteen siblings or one sibling that came before him. You'd never know his birth order unless you asked how many siblings came before he was born.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:44 GMT
Whoops, I wasn't thinking about that right. And yes, you're right about this; I was thinking "How many of your siblings were born before you?", which, yes, exactly equivalent to "How many older siblings do you have?"
Deborah   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:49 GMT
Yes, asking about older siblings is the way to go. However, you should also find out how many older siblings are still living, because phrasing the question in terms of how many siblings you *have* gives you the option of not counting the dead ones, and is therefore not a reliable means of determining your birth order.
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 21:52 GMT
Okay, make that "How many siblings of yours were born before you?"
Deborah   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:03 GMT
We're down to 9 words. I still would like to know how "howmanyeth" translates into Glotal's mother tongue.
Joanne   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:07 GMT
"combien de..." if it's French. I think. (I haven't taken French in a while.)
Travis   Tuesday, April 12, 2005, 22:10 GMT
Well, provided that Glotal just basically tried to as closely translate, word for word, their language into English, without word order, which they at least partially preserved, considering that they weren't using English word order overall, I would guess that Glotal speaks a language with SOV word order, and "howmanyeth" probably reflects some kind of agglutinative construct, considering how it was translated, or may I say, somewhat translated, into English, considering its being written as a single word, and the use of "eth" as an extra morpheme tacked onto the end instead of such having been expressed as multiple words.