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[–]reluctant_commenter 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

(except for counting, I think the french were high when they made the words for numbers wtf)

Agreed. 90 = four eighties plus ten??

[–]Destresse 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Four twenties ten :))

Lol. I never questioned it until I saw foreigners try to learn French and be stumped by our numbers.

[–]reluctant_commenter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ah shit, I wrote that wrong haha. I'll leave it there for others to be amused. My thinking does not work in French OR in English, apparently!

[–]yousaythosethings 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Lol yea the numbers are math problems. Like Abe Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago. . . ." for 87.

99 is even worse than 90: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf. Four twenties ten nine. And when it's just 80 it's quatre-vingts, but if it's 81 then it's quatre-vingt-un (without the s). Lord have mercy. When I was in my earliest French class and I was learning how you say phone numbers in France, I had the absolute worst string of numbers to be repeating.

At least the Swiss and Belgian francophones say septante, huitante, and nonante for 70, 80, and 90 instead of soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, and quatre-vingt-dix.

[–]reluctant_commenter 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, but "score" is an old word that functions like "dozen", at least it's not how the number 87 works lol.

Ah, interesting, I didn't know that about Swiss/Belgian French! I might just adopt that, lol. Yep, I remember phone numbers being tough to learn..