Lost in translation: Learning numbers in France

Why do numbers cause so many problems for learners of a foreign language? 

Perhaps because they risk a double condemnation: we fear ridicule for seeming to be simultaneously both illiterate and innumerate.

It should not be this way. Numbers are a universal language and they should be easy. A sum is the same in Swedish as Swahili. 

But it is true that the translation of numbers requires special effort, both in understanding them and uttering them. 

I see this in my French students studying English, and I see it acutely in my own everyday use of French. 

I have the impression that my brain moves more slowly when I am dealing with numbers, whether it is on the radio or in the tax office. 

When I hear a number in English, I immediately visualise a digit. Not so in French. This puts me in a disadvantage in negotiations with my phone company. 

The lower numbers are mostly okay – quatre triggers a mental association with ‘quartet’ and neuf begins with the same letter as ‘nine’; douze has to be dozen – even if a few of them, such as

huit and quinze, make me pause. 

The real trouble starts after 60. Even after all these years of speaking French, when I hear a number beginning soixante, I visualise a six and wait for what follows. 

Soixante-dix throws me for a vital few seconds and soixante-dix-neuf makes me go into calculator mode. 

In my brain pops a four and then a 20. Only after a few lost moments do I consciously do what natives do without thinking: place the number within the range of 80 to 99. 

For numbers in the 90s, French throws a double spanner in the works for foreigners. 

So 95, for example, translates as “four times 20 plus 15”. The more logical system of septante (70), huitante (80) and nonante (90) caught on in Switzerland but never in France.

Phone numbers are especially perplexing. The French give them out as larger compound numbers – 29 not two, nine etc – which means constantly facing the trouble detailed above.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Often plead “foreignerness” and ask the speaker to use individual digits. No one has ever had a problem doing that. More than once, we have both slipped

into English for clarity. 

Read more: Use French expressions to say what you mean in English

In person, most people will be happy to write a number down to avoid ambiguity, but beware of conventions in doing this which differ to the English. 

Decimals, in French, are expressed using a comma (virgule) instead of a full stop so 20.15 is enunciated as vingt virgule quinze.

Very large numbers are also expressed differently. Where there would be commas in a many digit number in English, French either leaves spaces or, confusingly, uses full stops: 999 000 or

999.000 both mean 999,000. 

Note also that while mille means a thousand, milliard is a billion. 

While we are at it, English has several ways of saying nothing (nought, nil, love or “oh” in phone numbers) but French generally sticks to zéro.

I recommend that my students of English do a lot of practising with numbers, whether they love them or loathe them, because they crop up in so many contexts and can be of vital importance.