How Manieth?

Long time ago, when I used to do freelance writing for an English daily, one of the articles that got published was titled, “HOW MANIETH?” This morning, I found that paper clipping in some forgotten file. While reading it did make me nostalgic, it also made three things clear: 1) My juvenile curiosity was second only to my imbecile writing. 2) There are cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers and these numbers are taught by English teachers and not Maths teachers. 3) PV NR was the PM of India those days… Read on…you may find it interesting.

How Manieth?

Every language has its own merits and demerits. English is no exception. Not all our ideas can be as well expressed in English as we would like to. How many times have you been bewildered about how to express a thought in your mind really well in English? Rudyard Kipling mentions the difficulties the Anglo-Indian child faces in his remarkable short story, Tod’s Amendment. He clearly brings out the dilemma faced by the Anglo-Indian child who first thinks and dreams in a different language and then attempts to translate his thoughts in an alien language.

I vividly remember one such instance and even today I am living with the same question. A couple of years back when I was in Standard X, one of my classmates asked me (I was supposed to be very good in English!) how to ask a question in English that elicits an ordinal number as an answer. In my mother tongue such a question is possible. But when it came to English, I could not satisfy him. And I asked the same question to many people well versed in the language (even to a few who considered themselves walking encyclopedias of English). Yet the question still remains. Well, let us take another look at this. We know that five, ten, fifteen etc. are cardinal numbers and that fifth, tenth, fifteenth are ordinal numbers. So “how many” is used to ask a question requiring an answer which is a cardinal number. Thus, “how many sons have you?” can be answered by “I have two sons.” Then what about using “how manieth” or “how manyeth” to ask a question to which the answer will be an ordinal number? Thus, we can ask – “how manieth American president is Jimmy Carter?” What a nice and easy question! Unfortunately, such an expression does not exist in English.

But we Indians have found our own ways of asking the question. Look at the following ways of questioning. 1. What is the rank of PV Narsimha Rao among the Prime Ministers of India?……..Rao as the PM of India? 2. What is the chronological order of PV Narsimha Rao as the PM of India?………among the PMs of India? 3. What is the ordinal number of PV Narsimha Rao as the PM of India?………among the PMs of India? 4. Which of the Indian PMs is PV Narsimha Rao?

Of these, the fourth one looks native English. But none of them is quite satisfactory to the British. They say that the second one seems nearest to what would be likely in British English. If you change the second question slightly in such a way that it becomes – “Where, in the numerical order of Prime Ministers of India does Mr. Narsimha Rao come?” the British would accept it as good English. But a world-famous British Grammarian, Sir Randolph Quirk says that the equivalent question in English is – “How many PMs were there before Mr. Narsimha Rao?” But this is an oblique question. In colloquial speech one might say “What number Prime Minister of India is Mr. Narsimha Rao?” This question seems the best of all. Yet the fact remains that there is no idiomatic way of asking that question in English. So, the questions remain unresolved and one is still left wondering. (Most of the Indian languages do have a simpler and straighter way of asking this question. Try it out…Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada…go on…)