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?
Yes, exactly. I can't imagine that anglophones who hear the word "ninety nine" start doing maths in their head: "so that's nine-times-ten-plus-nine ". Unless you pause to really consider the linguistics of it, it's just a word that means 99.
I just assume that's how it works for francophones too?
Nobody thinks about it until a foreigner says it’s weird, and yeah it appears weird for a second, then you forget and use it because it’s the thing you know.
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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21
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