phrasing a question. "the 29th Olympics"

Question

How would you phrase a question to derive the answer in the title? How should I structure the question to get the answer, "it was the 29th Olympics."

"Which Summer Olympics were this year's Olympics?"

^^is how I would ask... but I'm not so certain. One could answer like.. "it was the Beijing Olympics."

Thanks in advance.

Richard_s · Accepted Answer

Certainly your question would elicit that answer, but it is not a very natural question.

Clive · Answer

Hi,
Welcome to the Forum.

How would you phrase a question to derive the answer in the title? How should I structure the question to get the answer, "it was the 29th Olympics." I've assumed in my comments that you want these exact words.

"Which Summer Olympics were this year's Olympics?"

^^is how I would ask... but I'm not so certain. One could answer like.. "it was the Beijing Olympics."

1. We often refer to the Olympics as a plural, I guess because the full phrase is 'The Olympic Games'. But let's not focus on that here.

2. Note that people would normally ask such a question in a different way, eg.

How many summer Olympic Games have there been in the modern era? To which the answer would be '29'.

3. To force a specific answer with the exact words you want is pretty hard. My first thought would be to say something that makes the speaker think in terms of ordinal numbers,
eg Was the last summer Olympic Games the 28th.? Even here, you will typically get a short answer, like 'No, the 29th.'

You need to force the speaker to use 'Olympics' in his answer.

Perhaps you might ask 'Was the sports event in Beijing this summer the 28th. Pan-Asian games?' If you are lucky, you will get the answer you want, ie 'No, it was the 29th. Olympics'. But you also might not get 'It was', just 'No, the 29th. Olympics'.

As you can see, the natural answer often avoids repeating words like 'was' and 'Olympics' if they are in the question. That makes your task difficult.

Best wishes, Clive

Khoff · Answer

We've had this discussion before about presidents -- what question would you ask about George W. Bush to get the answer "43rd"? If you say "Which president is George Bush?", you are setting yourself up for any number of irreverent answers. (Just as the question "Which Olympics was this?" could be answered by "The Beijing Olympics." ) The truth is there's just no concise way in English to ask this question. (If you are mathematically inclined, you could say "For what value of n does George Bush equal the nth president?" -- but even then the answer would be "n = 43", and you want a question to which the answer is "43rd.") The closest you can come is to say "What number president is George Bush?" or "What number Olympics was this?" -- that would be understood, but it's not very elegant. (And, again, the answer would be "43" instead of "43rd.")

Sorry.

phrasing a question. "the 29th Olympics"

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