Some examples of the use of ordinal numbers in English: The 6th person on the list; September 23rd (the 23rd day of September); First prize.
Except in a few special cases, you simply add "th" to the end of cardinal numbers to form ordinal numbers.
In pronunciation, adding the letter "th" results in the sound /θ/, similar to the initial sound in the word "thank".
For ordinal numbers greater than 20th and less than 100th, we read the tens digit as the cardinal number and the units digit as the ordinal number. For example: 21st = twenty-first; 56th = fifty-sixth.
For ordinal numbers greater than 100, we use the following method: from number 101 to 120, we have the structure "a hundred + number"; from 120 onwards, we use the formula: (x) hundred + tens digit + number).
Example: 101st: one hundred and first
102nd: a hundred and second...
120th: a hundred and twentieth
121st: a hundred and twenty first
545th: five hundred and forty fifth
Interestingly, when you say "one hundredth," the listener might understand it as 1%, or it could also mean "hundredth." Therefore, in practice, one can say "100th" as "hundredth" without the "a" or "one" before it: "You are our hundredth customer today."
This applies similarly to "1000th," which can be used as either "a thousandth" or "thousandth," but "thousandth" seems more common. The same applies to 1 million and 1 billion.
For serial numbers 1000 and above, we apply the same principle as above:
1001st: a thousand and first
1002nd: a thousand and second
1020th: a thousand and twentieth
2021st: a thousand and twenty first
2841st: two thousand, eight hundred and forty first
With the number 10000th, we can only say "ten thousandth" – this word has two meanings, both as 10/10,000 (1%) and as "the 10,000th". Therefore, the interpretation depends on the context.
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