Re: Ordinal numbers

From: Anthony Cerrato (tcerrato_at_optonline.net)
Date: 12/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:14:19 -0500

"Juuitchan" <juuitchan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1104256508.974742.252330@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Why is it believed that, to make an ordinal number out of
a quantity,
> the quantity must be a dimensionless positive integer? For
example, I
> read that a now famous road called "8 Mile" is so called
because it is
> 8 miles away from something. But English has no ordinal
form of "8
> miles". It should really be called "8 Mile-th Road" (or
whatever). (If
> in English you can have an 8th Street, why not an 8
Mile-th Street?)

Or, to this ignorant observer, why not, "8th-mile Road?"
It's [the] 8th mile [from some arbritrary reference point,]
no? Language certainly seems to cause a lot of problems in
math--usually it's due to inadequate/imprecise definitions,
but sometimes it's just the imprecision of the meanings of
words themselves, eh? ...tonyC

> Also, to a walker, the latitude and longitude figures (at
least the
> longitude figures) given by a GPS are not cardinal at all,
but rather
> ordinal. Why then, read it as cardinal?
>
> Any languages in which a latitude of, say, 38 degrees 32
minutes north
> would be reported using ordinal forms?
>

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