Right conversion from declarative to interrogative!

[Hitch]

I have been trying to imagine the right question for this answer or statement: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the 2nd woman President of the Philippines". If a question or interrogative sentence should first be asked, what should be the right words that would compose the interrogative sentence or question? Well, I am from the Philippines and being a Filipino, I am not a native English speaker, and I've been thinking about this for a long time. I hope you can help me. I would appreciate very much a reply from you soon. Thank you very much!

Hitch

[fromatto]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I have been trying to imagine the right question for this answer or statement: Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the 2nd woman President of the Philippines". If a question or interrogative sentence should first be asked, what should be the right words that would compose the interrogative sentence or question? Well, I am from the Philippines and being a Filipino, I am not a native English speaker, and I've been thinking about this for a long time. I hope you can help me. I would appreciate very much a reply from you soon. Thank you very much!

Hitch

As I understand you query, you want to know what question would produce the underlined answer above. The following should work:

Who is Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ?

Who is the second woman President of the Philippines ? (This is more like a Trivial Pursuit question).

Who is the President of the Philippines ? (The fact that she is the second woman President adds extra information to the answer).

[Barb_D]

There is no English way to say "How many-eth was ..."

It's a hole in our capabilities.

If you want to know that Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States, you can only say something like "What number president was Thomas Jefferson?" and that's not very satisfactory.

It's easy if you want to say "Who was third" or "Who was the fortieth?" but not if you know the name of the person and want to know which one in sequence he was.

It's too bad we don't have "How many-eth president was Thomas Jefferson?" -- but we don't.

[Hitch]

Thank you very much for the reply! I appreciate the efforts very much!