Erstwhile Firsts
Well, I followed Covid, after a two-week gap, with a flu chaser. Apart from a bout of heatstroke in Japan in 2017, and a weird series of nosebleeds in Japan in 2018 (see a pattern here?), these are my first illnesses for goodness knows how long. I assume that Covid lowered my resistance generally
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As to ordinals, this is fascinating because it sounds like a natural version of what set theory ends up saying about numbers. All cardinals are based on the primitive notion of one (or unity). So in a sense it shouldn't give rise to an ordinal, because ordinals belong to a pre-established pattern -- belong to a sequence that can't be defined until you have unity already established, as well as having established the idea of a "successor" to a number. You need the number one before you have any other quantities because it allows for the idea of one-to-one correspondence, upon which counting and therefore greater and lesser numbers are based.
Also, "n+1th" is a legitimate rhyme for "month." See this great poem, by the great and famous, ever to be praised George Starbuck.
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We've all been there.
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I think I'm the first Welsh learner/speaker to show up to comment. Bit of a surprise. We all just love talking about the vigesimal and decimal counting systems so much.
Don't think I'd ever realised that Indo-European languages generally go in for not having a regular ordinal of one. Not at all boring news!
I probably just reacted in language lessons with a despairing sigh and a shrug when encountering erst/premiere/primus, especially if the ordinal in question also inflected to match the noun.
In Welsh there's 'un' (one). Cyntaf (the normal way of saying first, deriving from 'cynt' - like first and erst, it seems based on a superlative) aaaand unfed, which also means first, though these days is mainly encountered when numbering centuries or days of the month using the old vigesimal system.
yr unfed ar bymtheg ganrif - the first on fifteen century i.e. the sixteenth century. yr unfed ar hugain o Ragfyr - the first on twenty of December.
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I know, right? I gleaned this from the OED etymology for "first", which is actually a lengthy essay on this whole subject in disguise. And thank you for the Welsh info! I'll be spending Christmas in Wales, so I'll see if I can sneak this knowledge into a casual conversation somehow.
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Aaah, so "First" is "Foremost" and now I know where "erstwhile" comes from!
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