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31 First, Second: Ordinals
We have just learned how to count things – at least up to 4 things. But there’s
another way of counting, with words first, second etc. They are usually called
ordinals or ordinal numbers, and behave as adjectives in Croatian. Their forms are:
1 prvi first
2 drugi second
3 treći third
4 četvrti fourth
5 peti fifth
6 šesti sixth
7 sedmi seventh
8 osmi eighth
Of course, the adjective drugi also means other.
For higher numbers, you should just add -i to them, if they consist of only one word:
17 sedamnaest → sedamnaesti
40 četrdeset → četrdeseti
If a number consists of more than one word, just change the last word into the
ordinal form; if a number is in a compact form (without the i) just change the last
part:
31 trideset i jedan → trideset i prvi
31 tridesetjedan → tridesetprvi
Pay attention that all ordinals are adjectives, i.e. they change case, gender and
number when needed:
17th sedamnaesti (masc. N)
sedamnaestom (masc. DL)
sedamnaestu (fem. A) etc.
One thing the ordinal numbers are used for in Croatian is for dates. In Croatian, e.g.
the year 1932 is understood as the ‘1932nd year’ or just the ‘thirty-second’ year.
In Croatian, when you want to say that something happened (or happens, or will
happen) on a given day, month or year (expressed as a date), you should put the
date in the genitive case.
Bilo je to N trideset i druge G (godine G ). lit. ‘It was in the 32nd (year).’ = It was in
thirty-two.
Also, days in a month are referred to as the first, the second (the same is in English,
but in the genitive case), and Croatian treats months in the same way: the first
month (in a year), the second... ®. Normally people would just say:
Rođen N sam petog osmog G . ‘I am born on the fifth of the eighth.’ = I am born on the
fifth of August.
Of course, both petog and osmog are genitives of ordinal adjectives peti and osmi
(in masc.), since it’s just short for petog dana and osmog mjeseca – and both dan