In the lessons Counting to 10 and Counting to 1000, you learnt about Bulgarian cardinal numbers, used to denote a quantity. In this lesson, you will learn about ordinal numbers, used to denote a rank, or a position in a series (first, second, etc.).
Like adjectives, ordinal numbers have to agree in gender and in number with the noun they qualify. Here's the full inflection table for "първи", meaning "first":
Indefinite | Definite | |
Masculine | първи | първият / първия |
Feminine | първа | първата |
Neuter | първо | първото |
Plural | първи | първите |
This is a very regular inflection, and you can use the same forms for all ordinal numbers:
1st | първи | |
2nd | втори | |
3rd | трети | |
4th | четвърти | |
5th | пети | |
6th | шести | |
7th | седми | |
8th | осми | |
9th | девети | |
10th | десети |
Examples
"Плащам наем на първия ден от всеки месец" - I pay rent on the first day of each month
"Борис е вторият ми син" - Boris is my second son
"Това е третият път, когато я виждам" - It is the third time I see her
Since the ordinal "ending" goes on the last number in a group, you can use those to create bigger ordinal numbers:
15th | петнадесети / петнайсети |
30th | тридесети / трийсети |
61st | шестдесет и първи |
129th | сто двадесет и девети |
One exception though, the ordinal numerals for the hundreds, thousands, millions and billions are formed with the -ен ending (the е disappears in the feminine, neuter and plural forms):
- hundredth: стотен, стотна, стотно, стотни
- thousandth: хиляден, хилядна, хилядно, хилядни
- millionth: милионен, милионна, милионно, милионни
- billionth: милиарден, милиардна, милиардно, милиардни
Abbreviations
Ordinal numbers are abbreviated with the number followed by a dash and the last two letters: 1-ви, 2-ри, 3-ти…