question words/phrases puzzle

This kind of question is a perennial one in English.

You could ask "Where does Brno rank among Czech cities in terms of population?"

(I assume you are measuring size by population.)

By the way, you are typing the wrong character for the apostrophe. You are actually typing an acute accent.

Thanks. No more lost sleep over it I would never be able to come up with that. I am surprised it is such a common question. I have

radovan I am surprised it is such a common question.

Yeah, non-native speakers (or even native speakers) are often puzzled or frustrated that there is no "whatth?" or "how manyth?" in English. Typically people ask about things like this:

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. What question do we ask to elicit the answer "44th"?

Wow, yes. And what questions do you suggest for your two examples?
Exactly, in Czech we have the question word "how manyth". And now you have invented it for English. We just need to get people to start using it

radovanWow, yes. And what questions do you suggest for your two examples?

For the first one, I think in the past people have suggested "What number president is Barack Obama?"

For the second one, off the top of my head, "If states are listed in the order in which they joined the Union, where does Tennesse lie in the list?" Someone may very well be abl

I have been trying, without success, to come up with a natural English version of "Radovan is the how manieth (my spelling) person to ask this question in this forum?"

I suppose I'd ask "How many people before Radovan have asked this question?" There is no natural question to elicit the ordinal.

It might be worth mentioning this in grammar books like Murphy´s Grammar in Use series and others, that English people do not ask this type of question, so they do not have the appropriate question word

radovanIt might be worth mentioning this in grammar books like Murphy´s Grammar

Azar, Murphy, Swan and the many other writers in this field do their best to explain what we can (and,to a lesser extent, cannot) say in English, if they tried to write about the countless thoughts that can be expressed concisely in all the other language of the world but not in E

radovanWhat would the question be to elicit "second" as the answer?

What position does Brno hold in the Czech cities ranking?

AnonymousWhat position does Brno hold in the Czech cities ranking?

It is not necessarily clear that "ranking" refers to size or population. It could refer to any ranking.