Hi,

I understand Third World and Third Party use the fraction term, however wrong that might be, and it's great to know. But I would still argue that the lesson is unclear if not wrong in this regard. The examples are introduced with:

You use tiers (masculine) or tierce (feminine) instead of troisième when expressing a fraction, a portion of something (= one third of), as opposed to a rank or an order (= third out of).

And that leaves more doubts than certainties. Only the "1/3 of a bottle" example and the troisième examples below actually have to do with this. What should be said about Third World and Third Party is that, for whatever reason, they use the fraction term instead even though they should, by any criteria, be ordinals:

- there is a First World (the richer countries), an implied though not usually called so Second World, and a Third World (poor countries).

- a Third Party is a party that's not the usual two in an agreement, conflict, war, legal action or whatever it is that usually has two main sides (parties).

I think the best argument to support that the lesson should be updated is all these unnecessary Q&A's, mine included, just trying to figure out why the lesson says what it says.