11/8/2023 0 Comments Learn french numbers(But if you’re staying in Switzerland or Belgium, definitely use their versions!) ONE HUNDREDįinally, we’re back to a single word: one hundred, or cent. I’ve never personally tried to use the non-French versions of the numbers in France, but many people online say that French people either don’t understand the word or will clarify the number you’ve said by using the “France” version of the number, it wouldn’t save you much time if you’re trying to communicate in France. In Switzerland and Belgium they often (or exclusively) use septante (70), huitante (80), and nonante (90). NinetyĪlternate versions of 70, 80, and 90 in Switzerland and Belgium Then, just like with soixante, you’ll have to get used to waiting until the end of the phrase when you hear numbers that begin in quatre-vingt, in case the number is not actually 80 something, but 90 something. First, get used to hearing quatre-vingt and immediately translating it to “eighty” in your head. Try to minimize the amount of math you do as an English speaker when you’re hearing numbers. The 90s are a combination of the – dix, – et-onze, – douze, endings as the 70s, along with the quatre-vingt beginnings in the 80s. There is an s at the end of quatre-vingt only when the number is eighty itself. The exact source of the “four twenties” concept existing in French is debated, but the general belief is that it is a remnant of a culture that used a “base 20” number system impacting the Early French language, perhaps from the Celts. Have you heard of the “four score and seven” phrase in the Gettysburg Address, or “The days of our years are threescore years and ten” in the Psalms Bible verse? But there is an old-fashioned word for them: score, which shows us that thinking of things in groups of twenty was more common once. That may seem odd, as we don’t usually think of quantities of twenty as anything special in English. The word eighty in French literally means “four-twenties” ( quatre-vingts). When you hear a phrase that begins with soixante, get in the habit of waiting until the full number is spoken before assuming the number is 60 something, because it might actually be 70 something. Note that seventy-one still follows the et pattern before the second number ( onze). Instead, sixty ( soixante) gets added to each number until seventy-nine. And see below for a side note on what other French-speaking countries use.) (Does this get confusing for an English speaker? Absolutely. In traditional “France” French, there is no separate word for seventy. Thirty is trente remember the et un rule for 31, making it trente et un and thirty-two is trente-deux, etc. Trente (30) is similar to trois (3) quarante (40) is similar to quatre (4), etc. Vingt (20) looks a little different from dix (ten), but for 30, 40, 50, and 60, you should be able to notice the similarity with the 0-10 version of the number. The et will only be added when the number ends in 1.įor twenty-two to twenty-nine, the pattern is “vingt” + hyphen + the ones digit number. Starting from 21, and for every multiple of ten going higher (31, 41, 51, etc.) until 91, the pattern will be the base number + et un (“and one”, or et onze, as we’ll see in a minute). SeventeenĪt twenty ( vingt), French is back to having a unique word for the number, just like in English. ThirteenĪt 17, French numbers start to have their version of the “-teen” ending, by adding dix (10) and a hyphen in front of the number to be added to dix. Then, in English, when we begin to add “-teen” as the numbers go higher, French continues to have its own “separate” words for 13 through 16. Just like in English, the numbers 0-12 in French are unique words. Individual digits in a number are chiffres (feminine) quantities of numbers are nombres (masculine). Let’s start with the normal, counting numbers (or whole numbers). In this post I discuss almost every type of French number and ways of talking about numbers and number operations in French (and in some cases, in Switzerland and Belgium).
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