English: Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
I thought it was french that did something like "three twenties and a ten" for seventy? Am I thinking of some other language?
That's true enough (93 = "quatre-vingt-dix trois" = "four twenties and three"), but it's still the case that the more significant digit is listed first - it's just composed by multiplying.
For the record, 93 is quatre-vingt-treize ("four twenties and thirteen")
the Swiss French dialect has a far nicer system - they say neufant trois, this is fairly colloquial though.