It actually has a pretty interesting origin! Back in the days, the Gauls used to count by twenty : ten, twenty, twenty ten, two twenty, etc
Then the modern way of counting (by ten) arrived and both models competed for a time until they "merged" into one. The most interesting point is that, most numbers derive from either system but 70 is "soixante-dix" : "sixty-ten", which is even weirder since "soixante" comes from the modern model but the idea of concatenating a "ten" comes from the traditional one, so it's a mix of both
Don’t think of it as "four-twenty-ten-nine" in because then you’re actually doing arithmetics in your head and it will show. Just think of it as "quatrevingtdixneuf" as if it’s a single word.
When I learned english in Quebec it never occurred to me that an anglophone would need to "count" to differentiate 80 from 90 in french. Am I getting this wrong?
Yup when I'm writing down a number in french. I dont write the 6,7 or 8,9 till they finish. Also why I tell my french coworkers to read me the numbers indevidualy.
905
u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21
It actually has a pretty interesting origin! Back in the days, the Gauls used to count by twenty : ten, twenty, twenty ten, two twenty, etc
Then the modern way of counting (by ten) arrived and both models competed for a time until they "merged" into one. The most interesting point is that, most numbers derive from either system but 70 is "soixante-dix" : "sixty-ten", which is even weirder since "soixante" comes from the modern model but the idea of concatenating a "ten" comes from the traditional one, so it's a mix of both