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For the long jump event at my school athletics carnival, people nominate and then get arrange in a certain order. I am looking for a natural way of phrasing a question to get someone to tell me where he fits in that order/sequence. One a native speaker would causually use. For example, if you're person A, and you want to elicit the following response:

  • B: I am the nth jumper, just X more people and it'd be my turn.

I remember asking "Do you know where you are in the jumper order?" which sounds stilted and awkward (and I don't think I am using the word 'order' correctly). How can this question be properly framed? Also, I have looked through questions relating to ordinal numbers on this site, but just about all of them are related to birth order, and doesn't quite answer my query.

JUNCINATOR
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  • Long story short, there isn’t a single question word or standard phrasing for ordinal number questions in English. You can talk around it with things like “What’s your place number in the lineup?” Also see this question: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11481/framing-a-question-whose-answer-is-an-ordinal-number – Jon Purdy Aug 27 '17 at 08:47
  • I think that most people would use the position metaphor 'Where did you come in the long jump?' in this particular case. – Edwin Ashworth Aug 27 '17 at 14:31

1 Answers1

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I would ask the simple question

What's your position in the jumping event?

This avoids the tricky question

Do you know your position in the jumping event?

which some people might answer with "Yes." Then you don't get the information you want and have to ask another question. On the other hand, if they don't yet know, they can say that.

Weather Vane
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