Problems with French Numbers - Numberphile 

And we still a words in french for 70, 80 and 90 in switzerland an Belgium (Maybe more?)

@@kadjit10 in Belgium only 70 and 90, not 80

@@fghsgh I know

​@@Percy84 It's very likely to be a legend, if you look at Breton language for exemple (a Celtic langage which was used in the western part of France): 40 is 2x20, 60 is 3x20, 80 is 4x20, etc. This way of counting is likely to have been also used in the "old" french in some parts of France.

The vigesimal system (with base 20) makes sense if you think of agricultural societies that would rarely necessitate to compute large numbers. We may have ten fingers or ten toes, the basis for the decimal system (with base ten), but the addition of all fingers + toes = 20, thus making the vigesimal system the basic computing base for many primitive and antique cultures (the Maya and the Inca in South America for example). With a vigesimal system you can count all the way up to 400 (20 x 20). French people all the way up to the Middle Ages used the vigesimal system in everyday usage. If you found yourself in a market in Paris in 1350 and wished to buy 60 apples you would say : 3 20 (three twenty or trois vingt) apples. A heritage we have of this is the Hospital des quinze vingt (fifteen twenty or 300), because it held 300 beds. It's only in the Modern age that French scholars decided to create and impose some kind of hybrid counting system, (a mix of vigesimal and decimal), for what reason I am not so sure.

kadjit10 so you are not french if you say it like this

​@@neitsab8172 I speak french but I'm not french. Just like in usa, canada, australia etc... they speak english but are not english ^^

@@kadjit10 yeah you speak french but your arent french

OH NO NO yeah that’s pretty impressive

We don’t use huitante in Belgium just septante and nonante

xD had to think a bit, but understood.

I just 5 to my knees

90 HAHAHA

99 quatre-vingt-dix-neuf 4 20 10 9.. easy peasy lol

I'm French and you just blew my mind

Spanish also uses the long scale. 10^9 is "mil millón" (one thousand million), which has the interesting consequence of Spanish not having a proper term for "billionaire".

Quebec is in Canada, not America

Canada is in America. Specifically North America.

very interesting about the celtic origin

@@toade1583 America is a continent, not a country.

yup, the dutch have a comma for decimals, and points for big numbers too! i was really confused when learning those english numbers the first time, nowadays i just stick with: "complete opposite of how my language does it" and i can work it out fairly fast! It even became normal for me now!

In Spanish is the same way too. But in most Latin-american countries they do it like in English. So it's actually more confusing for us because we sometimes read numbers like the European system, with commas for decimals, and sometimes like in this American system, with points

The comma thing is also the standard for SI units. For example, I have 2 000,90L of coke in my fridge. 😜

@@MarcLombart true ^ almost forgot it, thx for reminding ;-) PS. that's a lot of coke tho.....

@@MarcLombart that's a big fridge !

+Eddie Gooch I feel you XD

+Eddie Gooch The Belgian/Swiss words for 70 and 90 should be used in France.

+Maxime Schmitt Belgian is no language dude, the speak flemmish and french

Rem ko Did I say that Belgian was a language? I just meant that the French-speakers in Belgium and Switzerland say septante (70) instead of soixante-dix, and nonante (90) instead of quatre-vingt-dix.

+Eddie Gooch Pour une fois, les belges relèvent le niveau :)

In Geneva you stil say quatre-vingts instead instead of huitante. By the way, I remember that the first time I went to the Alpes for skiing, when I was a child, they told me to pick up the pair of skis that had the size 90. As they were French they had said quatre-vingts-dix... so I spent 5 minutes looking for the number 80 next to a 10. :(

yobaloncesto Depends on who you speak to I guess. I've heard it both ways but mainly the swiss way no the french way.

Belgium is also the same in FR but only there is no huitante

yeah, i'm french and my cousin are swiss, a monopoly party became crazy because of this différence with numbers ahahah.

Parle e français alors

I feel smarter now. And I have a new appreciation for the Swiss.

but some swiss-french say quatre vingt

Belgique aussi

wait shouldn't 80 be octante? soixante septante etc. comes from the old french and in old french 80 is octante

​@@pistolatime2515, because 8 is huit

Yes !!! Originally I learnt French, but in adulthood met Swiss-French friends, my counting changed overnight. I refuse the French counting but can hear it and know the number being said. weird.......

c'est pas plutôt la Belgique qui a commencé?

huitante ou octante ? :-p

Heureusement on utilize pas huitante en Belguique, ça sonne zarrebi...

Wait, really? That way of writing writing looks so much better

Lala Lulu But much awful to hear. :) soixante-dix (70), quatre-vingt (80), quatre-vingt-dix (90) > ALL

Lala Lulu Kinda similar in portuguese: Setenta (70) Oitenta (80) Noventa(90) Let's decompose setenta Sete-ten-ta Sete, seven in portuguese, ten, (duh) ta, alsoways placed in the end of 30, 40, 50 and so on Oi-ten-ta Oi, comes from oito, eight , ten, (duh) ta, alsoways placed in the end of 30, 40, 50 and so on Nov-en-ta Nov, comes from nove, nine, , ten, (duh) ta, alsoways placed in the end of 30, 40, 50 and so on

LordDayne ça te semble awful uniquement parce que t'es habitué à entendre soixante-dix et compagnie hein... huitante, etc.. c'est beaucoup plus logique.

Oui c'est une question d'habitude! ^^

Lala Lulu it also was this way in old french. They changed it for whatever reason.

Thank you, but how did you know I had one?

@@jasonhatt4295 I'm French, and I can tell you : He got no English accent while he talks in French. Or maybe if you're looking(searching?) for it, you can hear it.

@@MrZeDeathcaller lol, no I was making a Joke saying I had a French accent but I don't

@@MrZeDeathcaller Mais si il a un accent, quand il dit soixante par exemple

Il a un léger accent anglais toute de même et puis il se trompe sur le sport…

Ici aussi Mère Partie...

C'est pour que personne ne nous comprennent XD

@@ahbono Bon gros patriotisme bien gras et égocentrisme à la francaise (les anglais se fichent pas mal du francais qui est completement tombé en désuétude) rime souvent avec grammaire défaillante, rien de nouveau sous le Soleil.

Aux chiottes les rosbeefs !

@@necrodefecator à quel moment j'ai été patriotique?

Most people in general struggle with accents in their non-native tongue. It's just a matter of how much they practice.

ShowS it’s mostly an anglophone thing, I think, not uniquely English. We use periods for decimals in Canada, and use commas or spaces for separators. 1,234.5 or 1 234.5 instead of 1.234,5 If you’re aware of where the numbers are coming from it’s fairly easy to get used to reading it.

@@joshuahadams we use more 1 234,5 than 1.234,5 also the . can be use as a x :2.2=4 I am in French Canada

@@gaelquelennec4509 Do you remember what the Stanley Cup looks like, or have you forgotten? Maybe we'll let you look at it one of these days to refresh you're memory.

@@gaelquelennec4509 Le point est pour le produit scalaire. Tu l'utilises normalement pour des variables exprimées avec des lettres (qui sont donc assimilable à des vecteurs ayant un produit scalaire dans leur espace vectoriel donné).

Depends on the surface and how small your pen is. Points might be hard to make/ spot so people write commas instead. It doesn't really matter.

Jonah Falcon In French we say « double-v » to say « w ».

As a french native speaker, I confirm I never hear "soixante-dix" as two words but like one word, like "seventy"

Treize Virgule Cinq!

it helps that no one will ever spell, for example, 'door' by saying 'dee double o arr'.

Same goes for French but they see it: double v and not u like the English people. :-D

How do you pronunce it ?! You say : Twenty-ten ?or for 50 ? Ohlala i'm french and it's such a mess x)

If you think of it as being base 20, with "Hundred" meaning in the twenties then this is actually very intuitive. 90 is "Four hundred and ten". This is exactly the same was it's done in English.

@@azzary8523 Pronunciation is a completely different mess because Circassian has approximately 60 phonemes. I can write it but I don't think anyone who is not familiar with the lamguage would be able to comprehend anything

@@batuhan_a_kocak What language is circassian, daghestani ? Ossetian ? Georgian ? Tchechenian ?

@@Heimrik01 It's Circassian. Sometimes called Adyghe (West Circassian) or Kabardian (East Circassian) but two varieties are mostly mutually intelligible. That's why I used the umbrella name Circassian.

+Sabori sauce (Juan) I think im in love with you

I'm not keen on national stereotypes, but I've found reponses to a question like "can I say it this way in french?" really amusing. (all usually accompanied by a shrug, of couse....) chais pas - I dunno chuis pas prof, moi - I'm not a teacher pourquoi pas - wotever... Love it!

I believe it comes from the middle ages where they were using base 20

Do you mean baguettes? How can bread be 'dank'? And how can you smoke a loaf of bread?

You're getting closer to the truth than Mr. Numberphile in the video - what the French have is a mixture of counting in tens (from the Romans) and in twenties (from the Celts) - yes, it's pretty odd that it has survived this way, and other languages evolved from Latin with just the tens (e.g. Spanish and Italian). Mr. Numberphile is wrong to say that the words for French numbers over 70 numbers are 'invented' - they evolved; no French committee ever sat down and said 'I know, let's invent some new number-words just to confuse the foreigners'...

N'est pas trop difficile, actuellement c'est l'un de les plus facile langes apprendre pour Anglephones, si n'est pas le plus facile.

Evidemment tu n'es pas français! Correct version of what you're trying to say: Ce n'est pas trop difficile, en effet c'est l'une des langues les plus faciles à apprendre pour les Anglophones, (même) si ce n'est pas la plus facile. N.B. 'Actuellement' does NOT mean 'actually'! (Look it up in a dictionary)

pw274UK thanks!

Remember that when every child in Canada is forced to learn French numbers 1-100 in primary school xc

I just learnt swiss French. Septante and such.

Yes, as a French person who learned numbers like this I didn't realize that "quatre-vingts" was for 4×20.

Same here. No questions asked. Although I know now I would have if I had to learn the language for the first time. 🤣

@@thaik56 It's because in the Gaul, people were counting in base 20, forty was actually an equivalent for "2 times twenty" that remains in the french word for seventy, eighty (4 times twenty) and ninety (4 times twenty and ten). Swiss and Belgian didn't have this counting system, so they just put a word on seventy, eighty and ninety as English people does. I'm a French people too, and that's an amazing part of language history I think :)

Would a French person have trouble if asked to count upward indefinitely?

​@@davidr2421 No, because the weird part is only for the tens. After that, it's : 100: cent 200: deux cent 300: trois cent as it is in english. We just don't put the word "and" before the tens. 680 is "six cent quatre-vingt".

Ah ? Moi je pense que c'est l'usage qui a fait que le nombre "quatre vingts" sonne mieux que "octante", pareil pour les autres nombres.

Ce n'est pas que ces nombres sonnent mieux, c'est un héritage des peuples celtes qui avaient un système numérique vicésimal et non décimal. :)

ca fait logtemps que j'ai pas vu de nombres depuis l'entrée en prepa mdr

Just like how when using a word of Greco-Latin derivation, you just treat the word as its own thing instead of as a compound.

It is the worst number system I ever heard of

Well that was the whole point of the video, thus there was no need for your comment 😂 But thank you

@@derdenni6780 you missed the comments elsewhere then about a language (Danish? I don't remember for sure) that uses "half 3 times 20" for 50, "half 4 times 20" for 70 and "half 5 times 20" for 90. It's hard to get because "half three" in this context actually means "takeaway half from 3" ie 2.5. In my mind, that is far more complicated than French.

That's revelant on how "langages makes us think"... Or how, at the same time every langage (even Mathematical) blind us about REALITY.

+Joakim D Was about to comment it but you beat me too it.

+sboubinch Heh, just like the prof. said, you immediately think of 80. See, this guy's being cute, he means the actual 4x20. Capisce?

+Banzay27 it's funny because 420 is a date, not a number.

+Freak80MC hahahah he beat me too lol

Quatre-vingts, with an 's'. But, it don't take the 's' when there is a number after it. For exemple, quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-deux, quatre-vingt-trois, and so forth.

Dyms roro People went to war for much less, dammit.

+SKP23en c'est vrai, vous avez raison. le language est si difficile!!!(dont know the word for pointlessly difficult lol)

+Dyms roro Here it would be nonante neuf. Guess where I'm from :D

chomagable I guess Belgium or Switzerland lol. Do it in our own way !

+Dyms roro Belgium. Although not from the French speaking part.

McGoldenblade I learned quite a bit of Russian and counting and movements verbs was totally nightmarish. For movement verbs, you have different verb / verbal forms if you move often or not, if you put the emphasis on the destination or the movement itself, if it is a one way trip or not and even if you use a véhicule or some sort of transportation, or if you walk. After this, French numbers are easy as 1-2-3.

@@alanbouet-willaumez1390 yo could you give some examples? I speak russian but cant seem to think up any instances of this (maybe i dont notice)

Alikhan Tulessin if you are fluent in Russian maybe you do not notice :) there are many ways to say "to go" in Russian ! Very interesting and quite subtle but really tough for many people ^^

@@alanbouet-willaumez1390 oh ok i understand now haha

McGoldenblade: Spot on. 20 as base from 50 and reversed order (as in German): 91 is one and five minus a half score (1 + 4.5 x 20).

But it still has a name of its own even though it sounds similar

Penser qu'il y ait un "bon" côté et un "mauvais" côté quand il s'agit d'une route relève de la pensée enfantine. Ce n'est jamais qu'une convention.

@@persis63 l'humour aussi est conventionnel, merci nous de le rappeler.

Well yes but your syntax is a bit crazy because you keep putting the subject at the end as above! There is so much dislocation and it is not clear why you do it.

@@samuctrebla3221 Okay, c'était epic.

@@pinarozge6895 sorry but you're wrong, the subject in the sentence was "on" Which simply means "nous" (us) The "nous" at the end of the sentence is only there to support the global meaning of the sentence.

"you can't link two words together if the first word ends with a vowel and the second starts with one" soixantE Et isnt this against the rule?

Not an expert on French, but my thought is that linking is different than being next to each other. Linking is what happens when they combine to form a number.

pretty sure that's not the reason b/c you don't say the 't' on "et".

the French language has a ton of exceptions, in this case, saying soixante et onze sounds like 3 distinct sounds, soixante onze would either have to have a pause between the two when saying or would sound like all one word soixantonze.

There is a famous sentence in french that says: "the exception that confirms the rule"... I won't add anything

some calculators put the point in France

sometimes I have seen the point.

Dans ma facture de gaz pour mesurer plusieurs milliers de kWh ils ont bien mis un point, ce qui paraît bizarre au début mais c'est bien pour se distinguer de la virgule qui indique des décimales

The point occurs in French very occasionally

I have never seen the point.

Maybe it uses a specific code that is blocked? In the US, and number with an area code of 555 is blocked. So, for instance 312-555-7687 619-555-9274 723-555-1818 Are all blocked. I made up 2 of the area codes btw. I don't know if 619 or 723 numbers exist. 312 belongs to downtown Chicago, but only downtown.

@@raney150 Well I'm from Nottingham and it looks like a valid number to me. But that wasnt my point. Even if he used a blocked code, that would be the reason it wasn't valid, not the fact he made it up.

Chris Lee it is an transcendental Nummber.

Maybe it's an imaginary number, like quatre-vingt-i.

mybe it is an irational number like Phi ;-)

Counting in German is great too, even of they dont usually use comas, the words are increibly large !

@André But at least in German the words are (mostly) consistend and build up logically. You can just increase the numbers and as long as you know the new word you need to use every time you add three 000 (from one to thousand to million to billion etc) you logically know how to call every number you read.

Accuracy 100

@Genna Tuelz yeess euuuuh d'où you have a problème wit mi camarade

@@MakoTism cwoissant

@@lopkobor6916 pwease madwame je woudwai un C W O I S S A N T

oh sorry we are an old country with strong habits, excuse us

so what he said is even more wrong

Escom French pride is worst pride

+Cheedillow Excuse me, but french aren't alone, people from Québec (Canada) says it like french do.

+Cheedillow Swiss even made up a word for 80, huitante...

just start using it again?

No, French never started to use it, only Swiss and Belgian.

@@pokeretro7456 Actually they did. These terms came from some Eastern regions of France, like Haute-Savoie.

@@screw7841 No, very few people in Haute-Savoie use "septante". They almost always use "soixante-dix".

@@pokeretro7456 Currently the indeed don't, but decades ago they did. We often forget that even if Switzerland and France are two different countries, some regions of both are still attached together. If you go in canton Jura, you will hear that the local accent share a lot of similarities with the french Jura accent.

xD OMG HAHAHAHAHAH Dont be sorry i'm so glad someone thought of that xD

+R4V3-0N 10/10 for originality

+Gabriel -- He wants to say quatre vingt, really (no hyphen).

+Gabriel Wait, what? "4/20" is said "quatre sur vingt". Litterally "Four on twenty"

+Gabriel I sooo didn't get it. My bad. I think this as 4 : 20 (the time)... I just get the joke "80 blaze it". Slowpoke, moi? Noooon....

Là, il n'a pas parlé de toutes les règles qui concernent les ordinaux français : -le s après les mots "vingt" et "cent" si, et seulement s'ils se trouvent à la fin du nombre ; -Le tiret entre les ordinaux de valeurs inférieures à cent; -Le mot "mille" est invariable, mais "millier" prend un s au pluriel ; Mais en fait, la langue française est beaucoup plus complexe que ce qu'on pense.

Aliquid Nightmarish surtout pour les decimaux, perso entre dire 69 ou 6 9 je fait sa de manière aléatoire x)

Ben, perso quand le nombre de décimales est fini (0,125 par exemple), je groupe les nombres, mais quand il y a une infinité de décimales, la je fais n'importe quoi : le nombre d'or par exemple : Ça donne: Φ=un virgule six cent dix-huit zéro trente-trois neuf cent octante-huit septante-quatre... Enfin, c'est n'importe quoi XD

Killian Le Matheux Au moins depuis récemment il est permit de mettre des traits-d'union entre chaque nombre. Ça facilite un peu la vie.

Je ne peux même pas parler français réels sans l'aide d'un traducteur. Je suis vraiment un échec à la langue française , non?

***** I guess pause in between.

***** The melody is also different. "soixante-douze" obviously sounds like one word, with the pitch on "douze" going down.

***** soixante douze is one number : 72 and if for 60 that would just be soixante and for 12 would just be douze, hope that make sense?

***** The way it's pronounced and timing. In my case, and I'd guess quite a lot of other people I pronounce 72 Soixandouze, the "t" and the "d" tend to fuse.

HotelPapa100 what if your accent gets in a way?

It's also Western Europe and a lot of the world. The comma is far more widespread as a decimal point than just French. And so is the thousands separator is obviously just the other way around. This is also very common. Though, a thin space is preferable,in my opinion.

For a second I thought you meant the US state and I was really confused lol

I'm from America and I thought you were talking about a state

I was thinkin', wait a doggone minute, I never heard a that!

That's really interesting

AG So it's true. People in the South aren't as smart. What a terrible shame.

We must use the international notation at my school (EPFL).

yes in bleguim too and the frenchies forgive you .

In Portuguese speaking countries (I think in Spanish speaking countries too, but I'm not sure) we use dots instead of commas in that case (for example: 10.000 instead of 10,000) and in the case of decimals, we switch them up as well (for example: 0,08206 instead of 0.08206)

Though the official rule for my native language (Bahasa Indonesia) specifies the use of the period to mark the thousands, I personally use the tick/apostrophe.

Katia Van Deez Nuts

Was that done on purpose? Because as a French speaker that sounds very different from 90 pronounced.

"Quatre-vingt douze" (92) seems more accurately approximated. At worst, "Quatre-vingt deux (82)" with an horrible "deuze" English prononciation would fit as -well- bad. :)

@@guilhemane Yes, it was done on purpose. IIRC it had something to do with the whole plot.

That's the Canadian pronunciation.

REALLY?

Really

Real

OzenC did u check?

Rea

big number in spanish are very logical.. ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, millon, ten millon, hundred millon, thousand millon, ten thousand millon, hundred thousand millon, billon ..

Ryan Zarmbinski The one billion thing is actually the traditional(and logical) naming. The USA thought it would change it because reasons and the world just went along... or at least the English speaking world. There's a video on this channel about it.

iwannabeanarwhal That is true. Many Spanish dialects that have contact with English-speaking countries (i.e. US Spanish, Mexican Spanish etc.) tend to take on those different methods of saying big numbers. The traditional method is preserved in dialects like Castilian and Andalusian.

Odd is calling what it should be a thousand millions a billion.

Billion, trillion, quadri....lions do exist in french iirc(never used that), but dont mean the same number of zeros as in U.S. english. For really big numbers we usually use xxx.10^yy.

Chinese speaker here. English speakers are certainly not the only ones you mess with. It took me a long time to learn numbers in French and I never got used to them.

Well actually we can say it as we want but we mostly say "3. 14-15-92-.." and so on

What canton of French-speaking Switzerland are you from? These french numbers are quatre vingts (4 twenties Geneva Neuchatel and Jura possibly Berne) huitante Vaud Valais Fribourg/Freiburg or berne.

Soukaina yeah, you never really notice how weird your own language is (like how I didn't think that all of the exceptions in English were too weird until I looked at it from the perspective of someone trying to learn English)

i always wonder why they use eleven and twelve instead of oneteen and twoteen lol, i guess they just sound awful

It would be firsteen and seconteen.

This way of counting is french only. In Belgium and Swiss they have different words: septante, nonante.

You’re cute

Très bonne remarque, ces mots (septante, nonante, octante) ne sont pas connue (ou très peu connue) au Québec. Tu te demande de quoi ils parlent quand tu entend pour la première fois nonante-cinq :)

Well, almost correct, Belgians use septante ad nonante, while using quatre-vingts for 80. At least, the francophones do, in Northern Belgium, it's a different language altogether. The French do count in septante, huitante and nonante in the stock exchange, to avoid confusion.

If you listen however, the speaker repeatedly says "in FRANCE," not "in French." So he is correct because those words for 70, 80, and 90 are not used in France.

French numbers are CRAY CRAY. He didn't even mention the large numbers like 1.2M ("one point two million" in English). French say "one million two." Now, how do you know that's not 1,000,002? Because that would be "one million and two" (opposite of English, of course, where the "and" is grammatically wrong). So, to recap: 1,000,002 is "one million two," and 1.200.000 is "one million two."

Kévin Kira >1.200.000 is " un million deux-cents milles " Yes, that is the official number. But the shorthand, written like 1.2M (1,2M?), is commonly said "un million deux". Do you agree where you live?

Are you saying the English wore shoes long before the French? Thiis could be a cultural studies subject: "The French Barefoot Numbers System." How do they say, "This little piggy went to market..."?

I was going to comment this as well. Writing telephone numbers in German is horrible. I'm a native Portuguese speaker and we count the same way as in English, so it is very confusing. The person will say einundzwanzig, I automatically write 120, then I have to correct myself and write 21... And this is for all numbers, not only 60,70,80,90s haha Crazy how different cultures count differently.

How is that more confusing? Atleast in neunundneunzig, it is nine and ninety... the numbers are there. French, having quatre vingt dix-neuf, have 4 20's 10 9................ How is that LESS complicated?

That's literally the same number of syllables as saying "twenty-one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-eighty-five". German isn't more confusing than French. In fact, it's easier to understand than English.

But we Germans are consequent regarding the "ones". :D And we have nearly the same "tens" as the English. We say "Einundzwanzig", "Einunddreißig", "Einundvierzig" (One and twenty/thirty/forty) and we do it the same way with all of the other unit positions. 44 is "Vierundvierzig" in German (four and forty), and so on. So the unit digit always comes in front of the position of the tens. :) Plus, like the French, we make a comma instead of a point. The point marks the thousands, same as in France. So 10,695.75 (ten thousand sixhundred ninety-five point seven five) would be 10.695,75 or 10695,75 ("Zehntausend sechshundert fünfundneunzig Komma sieben fünf"). For Germans that is difficult when they're learning English.

You have a name for all your numbers though.

I thought Swiss french was like french from France.

Julos The Boss In Belgium too! When I lived there I found it so much easier than the traditional French method.

In Belgium they use septante and nonante, but not huitante. It is much easier for non-native speakers to use.

It's mostly just a slightly different dialect, but different dialects do have slightly differing vocabulary as well. Standard French is/was originally Metropolitan/Parisian French that was taken as the national standard, but many other dialects still exist, afaik some with even more differences from standard French than what Swiss French has.

I got points off because I learned French in Belgium but in France and the US they use soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix.

In Belgium , too .

Et tu dis quoi pour dix-sept, dix-huit et dix-neuf ? J'ai rien contre mais si vous utilisez des mots spécifiques faite le pour tous les nombres

Fyo_B He is actually English but he must have been in France and/or listening to french many times

HE'S A SPY!

Maybe natively bilingual? Is that a thing in the UK? I know here in the US a lot of kids are bilingual and really seem to have two mother tongues.

Maxon Mendel Lol of course it’s a thing

@@eternaldeagold8280 gotcha. I wasn't sure how much UK and France traded people.

Alan Bouët-Willaumez or here in Québec, we can say « dix point soixante-neuf »

j'ai entendu huitante pour les centièmes de seconde ou de mètre en regardant les J.-O. au Québec

@@akawikaa C'est un anglais qui parle super bien français j'crois plutôt non ? 😅

Système de numération. Un système numérique est un système qui permet de traiter des informations à partir de nombres : calculatrice, ordinateur... par oposition à un système analogique qui donne une mesure à partir d'observations physiques de différentes natures et sans nécessiter de calcul réel : dilatation du mercure dans un thermomètre, règle graduée...

+Rhinosaurus Do you know if the americans also used the long scale system? And why the UK switched over to the short one? The other really confusing thing is aluminium and aluminum :D

80 is not same as 420

In French it is

Quatre-vingt Quatre CENT vingt

It isn't pronounced four-hundred and twenty, it's pronounced four-twenty.

420 is pronounced four-hundred and twenty

I've always been taught the truncated version ( 3.1415 ), and always read it as three fourteen fifteen Never hear anyone arround me refer to it as 3.14116 ( living in north-eastern France )

@@KnTGaming : 1416 peut se prononcer "mille quatre cents seize" ou "quatorze cents seize" (même si ça se fait moins), d'où la confusion qu'ont fait les journalistes.

The whole western world decided to ditch the Latin numbers, and went for the arabic numbers instead. So I'm guessing that it's there where the differences came to life. Also, some varieties of French, such as the Swiss, Belgian and Canadian (?) have words for the missing numbers.

That's because the celts living in France used to count like that.

I heard that in Belgium they have words for the tens. I'm not entirely sure on this, but if it's true, then it's not a French (language) issue, it's a French (nationality) issue. Either way, I find it very interesting and it does train your brain a bit.

Diogo Castro Belgians have a latin equivalent for 70 and 90 (septante & nonante) but still say 4x20 for 80. In some regions in Switzerland they have a latin word for 80 (huitante). I guess it just depends of how romanised the area was back in the day. In some places in France (near the borders mostly) they would say septante huitante or nonante.

haha, true :)

I m native french , and he spells it correctly and has a closed french accent in the list of 20 first numbers . Only the "un" ( "one" ) could be detected as spelled by an english/american speaker . He gas accented "un" more than when he spells "quinze"

Milles neuf cent quatre vingt dix neuf

Xonetou1 les années quatre-vingt, et les années quatre-vingt dix

So do the dutch..

+yang zixiang pretty much the entire Europe uses a comma instead of a point. It's inverted in English.

same thing in Swedish, Danish, finnish and Norwegian

Czech does it too and Slavic languages in a whole as well!

+yang zixiang yep the same happens in Spanish; being a native Spanish speaker, it took me while to get used to the English way whenever I saw a number written like that in an English-speaking context, because my natural tendency was to interpret it the opposite way :P

@@lollo7417 bongiorno my Italian brother :)

Yeah... That's right....well i think...

蝦毀 .劉 That's because they are "pictures" (ideograms, pictograms etc.) rather than arabic numbers. The mayan ones for example were also quite easy (base 20).

蝦毀 .劉 That's the same than japan number ? :O Didn't know it !

DoomoBebop Well, the Japanese *did* learn to write from the Chinese. That's why you have two very distinct readings for the kanji (hanzi), one where the meaning is the same as in Chinese, and one where the sound is the same as in Chinese, but used for words of very dissimilar meaning.

But it sounds way worse. JK.

Most definitely

Same here in India!

char whick same in france

In Quebec we use a comma for decimal!

youve clearly never been to quebec where in a french school, you are taught to use a comma as a decimal and in english schools you are taught to use the point. I went to english school as a kid and later on went to french school in college and it drove me crazy!

Your learning the Belgium version of french

louis lamotte Belgian french is soixante-dix, septante, quatre vingt dix, nonante. Swiss french is as MrNacknime said correctly. (I'm a Belgian living in Switzerland).

MorliHolect same problem in dutch

Actually they just use quatre-vingts for 80 ;)

Nicolas Bertin Yeah it's very complicated but fortunately we don't write numbers with letters

Haha true

Except when it's important, like writing a check...

French are French... what can you do...

It's just a joke, baguette, you don't need to get triggered over it lol

Danish: 9+(4+1/2)x20

I'm surprised them canookies hasn't built wall on the Quebec border like we did with Mexico

HECKproductions , wow what a brain!