Discussion on question by olibre: Two English words to distinguish French words “numéro” and “nombre”

Feeds

16:04

Q: Two English words to distinguish French words “numéro” and “nombre”

I am French and I am always confused when I have to translate these two French words: “numéro de l'objet” = number of the object = a number used to identify the object “nombre d'objets” = number of objects = a number used to count objects These are distinct concepts which are expressed by cle...

Scott

In software specifically, these would be called the index and the count.

Peter Shor

In math, these are called ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers. We generally don't distinguish them in everyday English.

RShields

@PeterShor Oh, boy do we distinguish ordinal numbers from cardinal numbers. Ordinal numbers are "n-th" numbers.

FumbleFingers

They can be explicitly distinguished in usages like Do you know the part number? and Do you know the number of parts?, but the intended sense is usually contextually obvious (and disambiguating terms such as numeric code / ID can easily be introduced as necessary).

Peter Shor

@RShields: Give me two different, unambiguous, common nouns which I can use in the following sentences: The number of players on a football tean is 11. That football player is number 31. (In French, you would use nombre and numéro.)

Yosef Baskin

16:04

Count is very good for the quantity, and so is quantity, for non-technical applications.

RShields

@PeterShor The quantity of players on a team is 11. That player's jersey number is 31. Note that "jersey number" is a special name for a sports player's "identification value."

Peter Shor

@RShields: nobody says "the quantity of players on a team is 11". It's not clear to me whether the OP wants the usual translation of numéro and nombre, or whether he wants us to come up with technical terms that distinguish them. I'm just answer the first question.

RShields

@PeterShor He literally asks, "What are the short English words to distinguish these two different meanings of 'number'?" The word "distinguish" is right there!

Flater

@Scott: If it is used to identify the object (as per OP's description), it's an ID. If it is used to denote its relative position in a list, then it is an index.

Edwin Ashworth

This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network: Computer Science SE

Steve Lovell

16:04

Depending on what you are doing, one potentially useful word is numeral which refers to the symbol for the number, the thing you write. The Roman numeral 'V' and the Arabic numeral '5' both refer to the same number.

Strawberry

Outside of a software environment, numéro in this context is commonly referred to as 'point' or 'item' - so, "point 2 on our agenda", or "item 6 on my shopping list"

Janus Bahs Jacquet

@Strawberry Except when there’s already a noun, which there often is. Question numéro deux is ‘question number two’.

@olibre I have edited your question to make it clearer that this is not a question about coding, but about expressing a distinction between two concepts. If you disagree with my edit, you are of course free to roll it back.

Rob

@JanusBahsJacquet Your edit to the question somewhat invalidated the question; as now the answer is already in the question. number of the object vs number of objects

Fattie

of course the answer is INDEX. What is wrong with everyone today? (and sure, "position" in informal senses)

note thought that "index" is indeed a bit technical. Just as the first comment said we simply don't distinguish these in English. this is one of these incredibly long-winded QA on this site, where, the answer can be given in 3 words.

Ah! I didn't realize the OP was asking a computer science question. Pardon, l'OP, vou devrez déplace et vous un autre chose Endroit, desole et cordialement

olibre

Thank you @JanusBahsJacquet, I appreciate your improvements of the question wording. I will delete this comment later, once you have read it to avoid polluting this comments list. Cheers

Ben

16:04

My vote is for "ID", "ID number", "Identification number", "Process ID", "File Number", "Version number" or another "Adjective + Number" or "Adjective + ID" combination which suits.

Mazura

This doesn't belong on Computer Science. It belongs on French SE.

fedorqui

As a side note, such distinction also occurs in Catalan.

MSalters

@PeterShor: Player number 11 is is neither cardinal nor ordinal, but nominal - there's no order defined. IOW, it's a number used for naming or identification purposes.

MissMonicaE

Here's something that English has to distinguish these: Even if you use "number" both times (which can be awkward), the first is the number of the software package and the second is the number of the software packageS.