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Hello all,
I would like to know how would ask somone this : When were you born to your father? I mean by when here what number in the order of children.. A typical answer could be "I am the 2nd son to my father".. How do you ask this specific question? Is there a sentence at all for this?

Sincerely,
Prasanna

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

This is a frequent post by learners, Prasanna.  English has no question form for this.  You may ask 'How many brothers and sisters do you have?' and then 'Which one are you'?

Anonymous · Answer

Thanks Micawber. Yes, I too was thinking that there was no question for this. But I heard one person say "What is your filial number?" for this. Does that question fit here? What is filial number?

Thanks,
Prasanna

Khoff · Answer

To the average American, "what's your filial number?" would be completely incomprehensible. Maybe it would make sense if you were speaking in English to someone whose native language had a commonly-used question that translated word-for-word to "filial number," but it wouldn't mean anything to a native speaker of English. "When were you born to your father" would be equally inconprehensible. Psychologists refer to "birth order" as a factor affecting personality development, so conceivably you could say "what was your birth order in your family?" But we really don't have a very common way to ask this question.

Just out of curiosity, I googled "filial number" and found this:

The filial number refers to the number of generations that a wolfdog is removed from a pure wolf.

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