How do you say this in English?

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Framing a question to which the answer is an ordinal number
How to phrase an asking sentence that must be answered with an ordinal number (e.g., the third prime) ?

It is very common in other languages to use the literal equivalents of "How-manyth". But some how English seems to not have that word?

How do I ask a kid?

How-manyth son are you?

(To know whether he is first or second born)

Maybe one more example,

Mr. XYZ is how-manyth president of this company?

(Is he Mr. XYZ 3rd or 5th or etc)

What is the solution? I want a single word for this!? I know the round abouts, why not English has created a word for this?

Duplicates: 1. Framing a question to which the answer is an ordinal number; 2. How to phrase an asking sentence that must be answered with an ordinal number; 3. How to ask a question to get a cardinal number answer. These are in "matching order". The first one is a perfect duplicate of your question, the others are strongly related. The third is slightly different but still related. — Alenanno, May 10 '11 at 17:18
Well, I can't be 100% sure, but considering 3 questions have been asked and no-one could bring a single-word answer... I suppose there isn't one single word for that. During my languages studying, I've understood that not everything in one language is perfectly "transmutable" into another language. Consider, for example, the sentence "I like it". In italian (and other languages, see Russian for example) it's "*It is liked to me/by me" ("Mi piace." - I can't even give a literal translation), which sounds horrible in English. — Alenanno, May 10 '11 at 17:34
@Kirk: Out of curiosity, where did this question come from? We seem to get asked this a lot and it makes me wonder if it isn't part of a test or homework assignment. — MrHen, May 10 '11 at 17:35
@MrHen, you think so? It might interest you to know that 2 of those 4 questions, including this one, is asked by someone from India. The other two ones didn't fill the "location" field... — Alenanno, May 10 '11 at 17:45
There is also this one and that one. The part that tips me off is that most of them are asking about order of birth in a family and the word "framing" keeps coming up. — MrHen, May 10 '11 at 17:48
@Alenanno: I took the liberty of merging the two comments of yours into one, with still 80 characters left. Magic, ladies and gentlemen! (Drop by in chat if you can't figure out what I've done all by yourself.) — RegDwigнt, May 10 '11 at 18:11
I somewhat doubt it's a test question, since it wouldn't have an answer, but do wonder if each student reaches a point in learning English that they cant figure out how to say a thing that is so common to them, and yet we have no word for. — root1657, Aug 12 '16 at 04:20

How do you say this in English?

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