it might be more direct to ask: "how many older siblings do you have?" ____ "so you are the ___" instead of asking over and over if they are first, second, ...

hi closetoyou, just to echo what roi g mentioned, sometimes there are no direct translation of tagalog sentences into english (and you just proved it, didn't you?). "pang-ilang anak ka?" if translated directly to english would sound awkward! my suggestion is to invert the question to a 'direct YES-NO question': "are you the first (for instance) child of your parents?" "no!" "2nd?" "no" "oh, you must be the third child, aren't you?" "yes!" by the way, Kabayan, keep up on this site. I'm sure you would enjoy it! :)

dude as i know theirs some tagalog words that dont have direct english term.like the one you asking. cowboy...