> I ask for your first orange then you give me that one, in your first hand It's the difference between ordinals and cardinals. In human languages I see ordina

> I ask for your first orange then you give me that one, in your first hand It's the difference between ordinals and cardinals. In human languages I see ordinals as a pure shorthand: you could just as well say "give me orange number zero", except it's more cumbersome. I honestly can't think of a context (in human languages) where ordinals would be something more than a mere convenience. I believe the existence of ordinals is a technically unnecessary historical artifact: counting was invented before zero. PS: I doubt people number their hands. A person would say "in your left hand", not in "your first hand".