Mandarin Grammar

Ordinal Numbers

Learning Objectives


We are going to teach you how to use ordinal numbers in Mandarin Chinese.


Ordinal numbers are used in many daily life scenarios such as championship ranking, row order, position in a queue and so on. So, how we express these in Chinese?


Please watch our video to find out the answers.


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Learning Video

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Additional Notes

(1) In general, to make a number ordinal, we add “ 第 dì ” before a number. For examples,


  • The first, " 第一 dì  yī "


  • The second, " 第二 dì èr "


  • The third, " 第三 dì sān "


  • The sixth, " 第六 dì liù "


(2) Besides adding  “ 第 dì ”  before a number, ordinal numbers require a measure word with a noun.  For examples,


  • The first day, " 第一天  dì  yī tiān "


  • The second week, " 第二周  dì èr zhōu "


  • The third lesson, " 第三课 dì sān kè "


  • The fourth time, " 第六次 dì sì cì "