Problems with French Numbers - Numberphile

French numbers can pose problems for non-native speaker - especially when you move beyond 70. Also discussing problems with phone numbers and commas!
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Featuring Dr Paul Smith from the University of Nottingham.

NUMBERPHILE

Videos by Brady Haran

[kadjit]

In french we have Septante, Huitante and Nonante (for 70, 80 and 90). But the french don't use it. We use it in coutry like Switzerland and Belgium

[egillandersson]

The origin is the celtic system, which was "vigesimal" (base 20), even for 40 and 60. In Belgium, clubs of "old" people are sometimes called "les trois fois vingt" (the three times twenty).
- Belgium and Switzerland adopted "septante" and "nonante" for 70 and 90, but Belgian people continue to use "quatre-vingt" for 80, as French people.
- In French speaking Switzerland, some regions use "huitante" for 80, and some others "quatre-vingt". The old term "octante" is abandoned.
- American French speakers in Quebec use the French system, but the Acadia uses the Belgian one.

And, even in France, "septante" & "nonante" are used by specific professionals : the financial traders, to avoid the confusions.


About the decimal separator, the majority of Europe uses the coma.


Another confusion you don't speak is the BILLION : for English speaker, it's 10^9, but for French people, it's 10^12 (10^9 is a "milliard").

[vlogdemon]

It's not that the French didn't invent these words, it's that they removed them. These words existed in the father language of Latin, and exists in all their related languages such as Spanish.

[daanytv]

The swiss use the wrong or the right numbers i dont know each one had is opinion, but french-swiss are the most logic.
60 = Soixante
70 = Septante
80 = Huitante
90 = Nonante

:)

[Sayu]

I think the komma/decimal point Thing is more of a continental europe thing than just a french thing it is the same for german.

[batuhan_a_kocak]

In Circassian (a North-West Caucasian language), it goes similar to English until 30. Then it gets crazy.
30 = 20 +10
40 = 20x2
50 = 100/2
60 = 20x3
70 = 20x3 + 10
80 = 20x4
90 = 20x4 + 10

[RLutin]

this french way of counting is particular but when you learn it, you stop thinking at logic. great french accent btw

[chinois]

I understand that the phone number can cause problem fro someone who doesn't speak french very well, but for us we never have any problem with it. The thing is that we tell each number very quickly. When we pronouce "soixante et onze" we have finish telling the number waaaay before you have writed a 6.
As you said, we don't even realise that we're counting like this. Of course we all know that "quatre vingt" means "4*20", but we don't hear it, we hear 80.

[EmanueleShows]

Most of europe uses a comma for decimals

[EddieGooch]

I mastered this after staying a year in Nice. And then I went to Belgium..

[foxtrooper]

As a french person, i laughed a lot. x)
The way numbers are built always astonished me..

[red-clad-vlad]

Here in eastern Europe we use ", " instead of a decimal point. It might really be different from place to place. In Bulgaria, we always use spaces to separate parts of big numbers (100 000 000), so it's easy to interpret the decimals regardless of whether a full stop or comma is used for it (3.14 would be read the same as 3, 14 even though we are taught to use the later).

[Johnny-zilw]

Well everyone can laugh as much as they want but this video single-handedly taught me French numbers and inspired me to learn French.

[avi]

In Switzerland, we say septante (70), huitante (80) and nonante (90). Much easier!

[Ohxoz]

En France, la forme l'emporte sur le fond (esprit > pragmatique).  
Soixante-dix sonne mieux que Septante, Quatre-vingt sonne mieux que Octante, etc... 
La langue anglaise est logique, la langue française favorise le goût, l'apparence.
En ce qui concerne la virgule au lieu du point, cela est du au fait que dans la langue française, la virgule a une valeur symbolique inférieure au point. Elle est donc utilisée comme un appendice subséquent. Par contre le point, par sa symbolique majeure est utilisée pour signifier l'importance du nombre.
Ne parlons pas du passé composé selon l'auxiliaire être avoir...:-)
Beau travail en tout cas!

[grahoulord]

En France, on a toujours été des génies pour faire chier nos voisins de Grande Bretagne <3

[MarcDonis]

the way to say "99" in French is "4 times 20 plus 10 plus 9"
this explains why there are so many great French mathematicians

[Artahe]

We say soixante ET onze because of the grammatical rule that states that you can't link two words together if the first word ends with a vowel and the second starts with one. So, Soixante onze is not possible. Another example would be the translation of a sentence, let's say "what will we say about him after he's gone?". Litterally it would be " Que dira on de lui quand il sera parti?", but in reality, we write "que dira-t-on de lui quand il sera parti?". That -t- has actually no meaning at all, it's just there so the sentence doesn't sound awful to the ear. As to why put the word ET and not, for example, -T- ? Well, it's simply because soixante ET onze sounds not only easier to pronounce, but also better.

[luka]

I'm from Georgia, and we have "not come up with words" for 30, 50, 70, and 90. for 10, 20, 40, 60, 80 we have words, for example 20 is "otsi" while 30 is "ots-da-ati" which literally means 20 and 10, and 31 would be 20 and 11 and so on. 80 is 4, 20's as well and 91 will be four twenties and eleven.

[DurandJeeP]

2:48 The reason why 71 is the only one that has "et" (soixante et onze) is because "onze" starts with a vowel so we need to add that liason. The same is true for others numbers such as 51 (cinquante et un) and 52 (cinquante-deux)