Kioma Monato de la Jaro

What does “kioma” mean in Esperanto?

Esperanto has one small family of question words built from the same root plus a changing ending: kio (what), kiu (who/which), kiom (how much), and kioma — “which one in a numbered order,” the question that expects an answer like unua (first) or deka (tenth) rather than a number or a name. This clip runs through the months by asking exactly that: Januaro estas la unua monato — “January is the first month.”

The same word answers a much more everyday question: kioma horo estas?, “what time is it?” — literally “which-numbered hour is it?” — answered la dua (“[it’s] the second [hour]”), not a number on its own. Once you know kioma asks for a rank, “which floor?” (kioma etaĝo?) and “which page?” work the same way, all expecting an ordinal back.