Numbers 11–100
Numbers 11–100
French numbers stay well-behaved from 17 to 69 — and then 70, 80, and 90 do something genuinely strange that catches almost every learner off guard, English background or not.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
70, 80, 90: built out of 60 and 20, not standalone words
soixante-dix (70 = 'sixty-ten'), quatre-vingts (80 = 'four-twenties'), quatre-vingt-dix (90 = 'four-twenty-ten')
seventy, eighty, ninety are clean standalone words in English, unlike French
Standard French has no standalone words for seventy, eighty, or ninety. Instead it does arithmetic out loud: soixante-dix is literally '60 + 10', quatre-vingts is '4 × 20' (a leftover from an old base-20 counting system), and quatre-vingt-dix is '4 × 20 + 10'. English numbers are fully decimal and transparent all the way up (seventy, eighty, ninety simply follow the sixty/seventy/eighty/ninety pattern with no arithmetic hiding inside them), so this genuinely surprises English speakers — there's no English parallel to lean on here, so just expect to consciously do the math in your head until it becomes automatic. (Belgian and Swiss French use septante/octante/nonante instead — tidier, and closer to what an English speaker would expect, but not standard in France.)
et un vs. hyphen: 21, 31... vs. 22, 23...
vingt et un (21), trente et un (31)... but vingt-deux (22), vingt-trois (23)
twenty-one, twenty-two... (English always hyphenates, no special case for 'one')
Numbers ending in 1 (21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71) insert the word et ('and') instead of a hyphen: vingt et un, not vingt-un. Every other combination just hyphenates: vingt-deux, vingt-trois. English treats all two-digit compounds identically with a hyphen (twenty-one, twenty-two), so French's special-cased et for numbers ending in 1 is a pattern to actively remember, not something you can extend from English habit. Watch out — quatre-vingt-un (81) and quatre-vingt-onze (91) break this pattern and use a hyphen, not et, because they're already built from quatre-vingt(s).
quatre-vingts loses its -s before another number
quatre-vingts (80, with -s) but quatre-vingt-un (81, no -s)
eighty vs. eighty-one — English never adds or drops a letter like this
quatre-vingts takes a plural -s when it stands alone as exactly 80, but drops that -s the moment another number follows it (quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-deux...). This is a small spelling detail worth knowing for writing correctly, even though it doesn't change the pronunciation.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| onze | ohnz | eleven |
| douze | dooz | twelve |
| treize | trez | thirteen |
| seize | sez | sixteen |
| dix-sept | dee-SET | seventeen |
| vingt | van | twenty |
| vingt et un | van-tay-UHN | twenty-one |
| trente | trahnt | thirty |
| quarante | kah-RAHNT | forty |
| cinquante | san-KAHNT | fifty |
| soixante | swah-SAHNT | sixty |
| soixante-dix | swah-sahnt-DEES | seventy (lit. '60+10') |
| quatre-vingts | kah-truh-VAN | eighty (lit. '4×20') |
| quatre-vingt-dix | kah-truh-van-DEES | ninety (lit. '4×20+10') |
| cent | sahn | one hundred |