French Ordinal Numbers: Premier, Deuxième & More

You've mastered counting to a hundred in French, so when your Parisian host says her apartment is au troisième étage, you nod along -- until you realize you have no idea which floor that is, or how troisième is even built from the trois you already know. Cardinal numbers get all the classroom attention, but the moment French needs to rank, date, or point you to a floor, it reaches for a different set of words: ordinal numbers.

This gap trips up learners who count fluently, because French ordinal numbers aren't just numbers with a tag stuck on the end. They follow their own formation rule, keep a couple of stubborn irregulars, and come with a floor-numbering habit that catches every first-time visitor off guard. You'll need them constantly: reading an address, understanding a date, following a race, or working out which button to press in the elevator.

Forming Ordinal Numbers: The -ième Pattern

Most French ordinal numbers are built the same way: take the cardinal number, drop a silent final -e if it has one, and add -ième. Trois (three) becomes troisième (third); quatre (four) becomes quatrième (fourth). Once you see the pattern, the whole set unlocks at once.

A couple of numbers change their spelling slightly to keep the sound smooth. Cinq (five) needs an extra u before the ending, becoming cinquième, and neuf (nine) swaps its f for a v, becoming neuvième. Otherwise the rule holds all the way up: vingtième (twentieth), trentième (thirtieth), centième (hundredth).

Key Phrases

• troisième (twah-zyem) -- third
• quatrième (kah-tree-yem) -- fourth
• cinquième (sank-yem) -- fifth
• sixième (see-zyem) -- sixth
• septième (set-yem) -- seventh
• huitième (wee-tyem) -- eighth
• neuvième (nuh-vyem) -- ninth
• dixième (dee-zyem) -- tenth

[AUDIO: troisième] [AUDIO: cinquième] [AUDIO: neuvième]

Grammar Note

The rule: cardinal number, minus a trailing silent -e, plus -ième. Most learners get this right for regular numbers like trois or six, then trip on the two spelling changes.

• Common mistake: writing cinqième instead of cinquième -- the u keeps the "k" sound before the ending.
• Common mistake: writing neufième instead of neuvième -- neuf always swaps its f for a v before a vowel ending, the same shift you'll hear in neuf ans (nine years) sounding like "neuv ans."

The One That Breaks the Rule: Premier and Second

"First" doesn't follow the -ième pattern at all. Instead of a form built from un, French uses a separate word: premier (masculine) or première (feminine) -- the only ordinal in everyday use that changes for gender.

"Second" has a quirk too. Alongside the regular deuxième, French keeps an older word, second (masculine) or seconde (feminine), that careful writers reserve for when a series has only two items total. If a third or fourth item is possible, deuxième is the safer, far more common choice.

Key Phrases

• le premier jour (luh pruh-myay zhoor) -- the first day
• la première fois (lah pruh-myair fwah) -- the first time
• la seconde guerre mondiale (lah suh-gohnd gehr mohn-dyal) -- the Second World War

[AUDIO: premier] [AUDIO: première] [AUDIO: seconde]

Grammar Note

Premier/première agree in gender like a regular adjective: les premiers résultats (the first results), les premières impressions (first impressions). Every ordinal from deuxième onward stays the same for masculine and feminine, but still adds -s for a plural noun: les troisièmes (the third-place finishers).

• Common mistake: using première as an adverb, as in "first, let's eat." French wants premièrement or d'abord there instead -- première only ever describes a noun.
• Common mistake: reaching for second/seconde by default. Outside a fixed pair like la Seconde Guerre mondiale, deuxième is what you'll hear and should use.

Where You'll Actually Use Them: Dates, Floors, and Rankings

Ordinal numbers show up everywhere in daily French life, starting with the calendar. The 1st of any month is always le premier (le premier mai, May 1st), but every other date uses a plain cardinal number: le deux mai (May 2nd), le vingt-cinq décembre (December 25th) -- never le deuxième mai.

Floors cause the most real confusion for travelers, because France counts them differently than the US does. The ground floor is le rez-de-chaussée -- not "the first floor." What Americans call the second floor, the French call le premier étage. Climb one more flight and you're on le deuxième étage, the third floor by American counting.

Ask for someone's apartment "on the third floor" in Paris and you might end up a flight too low, because troisième étage actually means the fourth floor counting from the street. When in doubt, ask "C'est à quel étage ?" (What floor is it on?) and listen carefully to the number.

Rankings lean on ordinals just as heavily: a runner might arriver premier (finish first) or finir troisième (finish third), and a report card might rank a student deuxième de la classe (second in the class). Centuries follow the same pattern, spoken as ordinals even though they're written with Roman numerals: le XIXe siècle is read aloud as le dix-neuvième siècle (the nineteenth century).

Reading and Writing Abbreviations: 1er, 2e, 3e...

French abbreviates ordinal numbers constantly in writing -- on forms, in addresses, in headlines -- so recognizing the shorthand matters as much as spelling out the full word. Premier shortens to 1er, and première to 1re. Every ordinal after that just adds a lowercase e: 2e, 3e, 4e, and so on (older texts may still use 2ème, 3ème, but modern style guides prefer the shorter e).

Key Phrases

• 1er -- premier (1st)
• 1re -- première (1st, feminine)
• 2e -- deuxième (2nd)
• 3e -- troisième (3rd)
• XIXe siècle -- dix-neuvième siècle (19th century)

This abbreviation shows up somewhere every visitor to Paris eventually needs: the city's twenty arrondissements, or districts, are simply numbered le 1er, le 2e, le 3e, all the way to le 20e.

Paris's arrondissements spiral outward from the center like a snail shell, which is exactly the nickname Parisians use for the pattern: en escargot. The 1st sits at the Louvre, and the numbers wind clockwise and outward from there, so a Métro map is really just twenty ordinal numbers wrapped around the city.

Putting Ordinal Numbers Into Practice

Picture yourself apartment-hunting in Lyon, on the phone with a landlord who's just texted you an address.

• Landlord: "C'est au troisième étage, sans ascenseur, je vous préviens !" (It's on the fourth floor, no elevator, I'm warning you!)
• You: "D'accord, donc c'est le rez-de-chaussée, puis trois étages à monter ?" (Okay, so that's the ground floor, then three flights up?)
• Landlord: "Exactement -- et le premier arrivé aura le meilleur prix !" (Exactly -- and whoever gets there first gets the best price!)

Notice how naturally the ordinal does double duty here -- counting floors and ranking who arrives first -- with nothing fancier than the pattern you just learned.

Practice Exercises

• Fill in the blank: Cinq becomes ___ (fifth) once you add the ending, with an extra u.
• Translate into French: "It's the first time."
• Multiple choice: Which floor is le premier étage in the French system? (a) the ground floor (b) the floor above the ground floor (c) the top floor
• Fill in the blank: Neuf becomes ___ (ninth), swapping the f for a v.
• True or false: Every date in French uses an ordinal number, like le deuxième mai for May 2nd.
• Translate into French: "She finished second in the race." (use deuxième)

Answer Key

• cinquième -- Cinq becomes cinquième.
• C'est la première fois.
• (b) the floor above the ground floor -- the ground floor itself is le rez-de-chaussée.
• neuvième -- Neuf becomes neuvième.
• False -- only the 1st of the month uses an ordinal (le premier mai); every other date uses a plain cardinal number (le deux mai).
• Elle a fini deuxième de la course.

Numbers With a Job to Do

• Most French ordinals follow one rule: cardinal number, minus a trailing silent -e, plus -ième -- with cinquième and neuvième as the two spelling exceptions to watch for.
• Premier/première breaks the pattern entirely and is the only ordinal that agrees in gender; save second/seconde for when a series truly has just two items.
• Remember that French floors count from the rez-de-chaussée, so le premier étage is one flight above the ground floor, not the ground floor itself.

Next time you're reading a French address, a race result, or a page in a history book, you'll recognize exactly what those small -ième endings are doing. For the rest of the number system these build on, check out Passage's guide to French Numbers 1-100, or browse Grammar for more everyday constructions like this one.