4.4 Настоя́щая речь – What’s the date?

Како́е сего́дня число́?

Now we get to WHY you need to learn both higher CARDINAL numbers and also those new ORDINAL numbers.

Maybe you guess, but we need ordinal numbers to talk about dates and years in Russian. For example, to talk about today’s date we use ordinal numbers. In English we say, it’s July 4th! Or, today is the 31st of October. Russian, it turns out, does the same thing. We use ordinal numbers when talking about today’s date:

Notice the question, како́е, itself is an adjective. This means the answer to this question should also be an adjective. Can a number be an adjective? Ordinal numbers, like first, second, third, etc, are indeed adjectives.

You just learned the Russian equivalent of 1st – 31st in their masculine, dictionary forms. Notice число ‘date’ is what gender? Neuter. This all means that your answer to the question Како́е сего́дня число́? is going to be neuter also!

Questions: Како́е сего́дня число́?

Because the noun число́ is neuter, any adjective that describes it, which here is the ordinal number, must also be neuter. Listen to the following audio clips. Како́е сего́дня число́? Can you hear it?