You associate “quatre vingt” as meaning 80. In your head it’s 80. You don’t think four times twenty. So it’s not as complicated as it looks. I don’t see kids really getting that wrong.
It clearly comes from a lack of having a separate term for 80 or even 90 for that matter the way that German and English do; which I find peculiar too, considering that French a Romance language (not the heart romance), while the people are largely Germanic in origin, i.e., the Franks. It makes sense when you consider how the roman numeral system functions and that the Franks were in far closer proximity to Rome than the Germans, including the ones that moved to the British isles and became the English, i.e., Anglos and the Saxons, Germans. It seems that those interplays and intersections with the cultures are what determined how French language numbering worked based on when and where and what they had contact with.
There is an institute in France hose sole purpose is to guard language, I wonder why they didn't find the motivation to clean it up a bit. It would make it much more attractive for outsiders and make it more global.
And its not just me, literally everybody I speak to who attempted to learn french has similar experience. Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting because you mixed gender of a noun) or often just give up.
- 70 = septante (versus soixante-dix, which is 60-10)
- 80 = huitante (versus quatre-vingt, which is 40-20), *EDIT*: wrong, see below.
- 90 = nonante (versus quatre-vingt-dix, which is 40-20-10)
The article also mentions something interesting I didn't know:
> The use of septante for "seventy" and nonante for "ninety", in contrast to Standard French soixante-dix (literally "sixty-ten") and quatre-vingt-dix'("four-twenty-ten"). Those former words occur also in Swiss French. Unlike the Swiss, however, Belgians never use huitante for quatre-vingts ("four twenties"), with the use of octante in the local Brussels dialect as being the only exception. Although they are considered Belgian and Swiss words, septante and nonante were common in France until around the 16th century, when the newer forms began to dominate.[4]
*EDIT*: This doesn't appear to be true, Belgian French speakers also say quatre-vingt for 80.
> Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting because you mixed gender of a noun).
I'm not sure if it's a language problem or a people problem. I often encounter people that mix the gender of nouns, and I don't really care about it. It's a lot to learn and not very important. Just like some people don't have a great accent, that's how it is, it doesn't stop people from communicating. Same for the people that I know, unless we're asked we wouldn't bother correcting someone that "le table" is actually "la table" because tables are female.
On my side, I find the pronunciation of English to be very hard to learn and to master, and am scared of sounding stupid whenever I talk English, so I avoid it, and end up not being good at it, so I can understand the sentiment.
I also often hear others mispronounce words; friends, colleagues, even on TV.
I guess my point is that if you’re mispronouncing English words you’re speaking it like a native!
I’m French and, at least in my circle, I’ve never seen a native French « humiliating » a non-native trying to speak French.
And to me there is two reasons : - we know our language is difficult to learn - we are really bad when it comes to speak any foreign language
As*oles are totally a thing (especially in the banking/financial sector) but most French people are admirative of anyone who speaks more than one language. Because most of us can’t.
I don’t bother now. Germany, Italy, Greece, sure, but not France.
It seems like a lot of people have this very strong "foreigner = English" mapping in their head. As soon as you're outed as "foreigner" for any reason, you get the English (even if you're proficient in the local language).
I definitely think it's disrespectful to switch languages on someone like that, but a lot of people just don't seem to think about it. Multi-lingual conversation manners are not commonly talked about!
An amusing version of this happened to me in Porto recently at a bookshop. Many moons ago I was fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, but today that's retained mostly in reading, I can't speak well nor can I easily follow European Portuguese speakers. I was browsing the Portuguese literature section when the shop keeper asked me question (which I didn't catch), and then upon ascertaining I spoke English she rather forcefully explained where the English section was, but very confusedly watched as I politely kept where I was. To make matters probably more confusing I ended up buying a linguistically avant-garde book that I soon learned really is best suited for native speakers (Guimarães Rosa, the author, is basically a Brazilian James Joyce)
Interestingly enough, if you listen to people talking in the 50s (old films, radio, etc) , they speak something which is a lot closer to written French. I'm under the impression that there's a growing gap between spoken and written French, and the French académie is not helping by essentially preventing the written language from evolving.
As to cleaning it up, well, lots of people agree with you, but always end up facing extremely strong opponents who accuse them of destroying the very nature of French culture!