Preface
We get many questions along the lines of "how do I frame a question in order to elicit an ordinal number as a response?". And, inevitably, they are all closed as duplicates of:
What ordinal number reflects the position of the number five in the set of five numbers?
I want to make a question having an answer as follows:
5 is the third prime number.
The bold part is the answer. How to phrase the question?
Whose top-voted, but not accepted, answer is (summarized):
The number two is the first prime number. In the sequence of prime numbers, what is the position of the number five?
That is, this question, and this answer, are the de facto "canonical versions" of this common inquiry on EL&U.
I don't think the current "canonical" question is the best representative, and I don't think the "canonical" answer(s) are the standard, natural way native speakers would frame the question.
To illustrate my point, the answers of the ‘canonical’ question are in bold while the linked "answers" are each taken from one of the duplicate posts.
(I hope you agree that none of questions in bold could possibly lead a person to reply: I am the third eldest daughter, or, I came fifth in the race.)
Question: What ordinal number reflects the position of the number five in the set of prime numbers?
Answer: I am the third daughter of my parents.
Answer: I am the third born in my family
Question: The number two is the first prime number. In the sequence of prime numbers, what is the position of the number five?
Answer: George Washington was the first president.
Answer: You finished 5th [in the race].
Question: For the sentence “5 is the nth prime number” to be correct, what should be the value of n?
Answer: He is my second son.
Answer: I'm the second child of my parents
Question: What is the position of 5 in the sequence of prime numbers?
Answer: I'm eating the fourth apple
Answer: I am the fourth son of my father
Answer: Barack Obama is the 44th President of U.S.A
If you agree that the questions and answers are appropriate and correct; please leave the following questions closed as a duplicate of the canonical question above. However, I would suggest that we identify a new "canonical" version of this question.
List of closed questions as being duplicates of current de facto "canonical" question.
How can I ask a question with the answer "I'm eating the fourth apple"?
Framing a question to which you reply with "I am the third born in my family"
How do you convert the sentence "George Washington was the first president." to a question?
My preference is to elect question number 1 (Framing a question whose answer is an ordinal number) as the new canonical question, and linking all the other questions to that one. It has four practical sensible answers, and nine upvotes. It might also be an idea to merge this post with question number 2 (How to ask about ordinal place of an offspring?).
The answers in the two questions do not clash, and they are not carbon copies of each other. Moreover, users will see this wise observation: “There isn't really a simple way of asking this in English, ...”. It also helps to explain why the terms; manieth, manyth, or nynth do not exist in the English language.