… Four Twenties Ten Nine, Hundred
English: What’s that?
German: “Was ist das?”
Dutch: “Wat is dat?”
Spanish: ¿Qué es eso?
French: “qu’est-ce-que c’est ?”What. the fuck?!
Although most French say “Qu’est-ce que c’est”, it is worthy to note that the proper/formal French is “Qu’est-ce?”. So strictly equivalent to “What is that”, word for word. :)
And the French is pronounced keskecè. Half the letters are silent because why not
French-Québec : “Kossé ça?”
French also : “C’est quoi?”
… or : “Qu’est-ce?”Word for word of "qu’est-ce-que c’est ?” …
…goes like : "What’s this that this is?
…or : “What’s this which this is?”“Qu’est-ce?” sounds like the english “Case”.
Since this is just one syllable it might be difficult to hear out of context.
Edit : Delayed 8h because of DDOS attackAgree. But you can say “C’est quoi ?” too. More “street language” but it’s okay
«Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce bordel ?»
Hahaha “C’est quoi cette merde ?”
In Portuguese we actually can say “O que é isso?”, basically the same as in Spanish, but I’d say I use more commonly “O que que é isso?”, which seems closer to French version. Funny, had never thought about it like that.
Then ask someone who hasn’t learnt French how many syllables there are in “qu’est-ce que c’est ?” And watch the look of horror on their face when you tell them it’s just 3.
I had to look this up. What the fuck? They came up with numbers up to 60 and then just said “eh, fuck it” and made 70 “sixty-ten”, 80 “four-twenties” and 90 “four twenties ten”.
We’re not that different with the teens. We effectively say “seven ten”, “eight ten”, “nine ten”. You don’t think of nineteen as “nine+ten”, it’s just its own number. Well, the French take that one step farther.
The other way around. We started with base 20 everywhere then simplified some of it.
During medieval times it used to be :
10 Dix (10)
20 Vingt (20)
30 Vingt et dix (20+10)
40 Deux-vingt (2x20)
50 Deux-vingt et dix (2x20+10)
60 Trois-vingt (3x20)
70 Trois-vingt et dix (3x20+10)
80 Quatre-vingt (4x20)
90 Quatre-vingt et dix (4x20+10)Then they switched to base 10… But only up to 70 for some reasons in France. Belgium and Switzerland (and some parts of France) have gone all the way to 100 by using Septante (70), Octante or Huitante (80) and Nonante (90).
Belgians and Swiss being the premium version of France, once again. Seems like all the sensible French people packed up and left nonsense behind.
What a nice thing to say
The French earned it by continuing to use quatrevingt.
Wow, wait ! stop ! I can’t handle all this niceness !
In francophone Switzerland, they use septante, huitante, and nonante for 70, 80, and 90, respectively. Much more sensical, imo.
In Belgium, they use “septante” and “nonante” too. 80 is still “quatre-vingt”.
Swiss French is what French should have always been imo
Should a language be something else that the product of what those speaking make of it? :)
For any other language? The people who speak it decide. For specifically French? They decided 90 should be “four times twenty and ten” and thereby forfeited their linguistic rights.
Funny you say that, the French are I believe the only nation to have come up with an institution specifically tasked with regulating the French language : l’Académie Française.
They have been around for almost 400 years, are rife with corruption, have produced a new version of the “official” dictionary every 50 years on average (and it’s not even a good one), a single grammar book that was so bad and full of ridiculous mistakes that the linguist community have been laughting at them continuously since then, and of the 40 members (for life) none has been a linguist since 1903. And although their enormous wealth has been subsidised by the taxpayers since its creation, the French governement has waited until 2015 to FINALLY require them to submit their accounting to the State accounting supervisor.
So you are very right, the French have foreited their linguistic rights indeed…
Meanwhile all french speakers understand each other perfectly well.
Do English speakers mistake people saying ninety-nine (99) for them saying ninety nine (90, 9)? No? How come? It’s the same thing as in french!
On a similar note: In German, “seven hundred fifty three” would be said as “seven hundred three and fifty”.
At least it’s consistent - starting at “thirteen” , which is “three ten”, up to ninety nine, which is “nine and ninety”, the multiples of ten come last.
It is pretty annoying, though, when a number like 123’456’789 is spoken as 132-465-798, though.
Apparently, it’s because in old Germanic, the numbers were spoken “backwards” (one hundred twenty three being spoken as “three and twenty and hundred”), and we only partially reversed that.
I’ve seen this coutless times, and as a french native I’m getting tired of this, I want to tell you that no french think of it that way.
You know how you have “eleven” “twelve” and then you switch to “xxteen” for the next 6 number ? You never dissociate them, because that’s just the way it is. French are the same “douze”, “treize”… and then suddenly “dix-sept” but nobody dissociate them, this is just one word that means “17”
And then it’s the same with “seventy”, french don’t dissociate 60 and 10 in their mind, it’s just one word. Sure from an ethymologic standpoint it comes from two word but it’s not how we think about it.
When you say “sunday” you never think “day of the sun”, when you say “blueberry”, “blackberry” you don’t think of the color, you think of the particular fruit, everybody can see the origin of the word, but nonetheless the word is one unit.
Anyway. Yes it is weird to learn a new language and see how it evolved into a weird mess, but please know that when you make this kind of comment you don’t look like you are well informed about the french language, you just look like kids that have learned a new word and can’t stop using it everywhere.
Uh, French is my first language and I’ve definitely thought that four-twenty-ten-seven was a weird as fuck way to say ninety-seven since I was a kid.
I want to tell you that no french think of it that way.
Of course not, that’s the point though. It is your first language, so for you that’s the norm. But for the rest of the world with another language that’s weird as fuck.
Nah, it’s weird, that dude’s just touchy.
It doesn’t matter, it’s just something every child learns by heart and doesn’t question. You don’t have to be offended by this post, it’s just funny
Not particularly offended, but just tired of seeing this jokes which I think is not really accurate, and it’s like an entry level joke about french language, there could be so many ways to make fun of french
Jokes aren’t meant to be accurate, don’t fret
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The “four twenties” might seems more familiar to americans by replacing “twenties” by “score” as in : " four score and seven years ago…"
Yeah, that’s weird too.
This doesn’t apply to all french speaking regions. Switzerland use septante and nonante and in some regions of the country also huitante.
I think it was around that time in my French class, with my teacher just without any comment expecting us to take that seriously, that I decided that’s not a language I wanted to deal with.
With the exception of Eleven and Twelve, English is actually pretty good at this.
The other day I decided I would stop saying quatre-vingt-dix (4, 20, 10 = 90) instead I would say huit-dix-dix (8, 10, 10) or even deux-quarante-dix (2, 40, 10) and shit like that
to add some context i forgot about it an hour after
- Combien pour ma commande ?
- Alooors… Une bavette de trois livres et deux-cent trois vingt et douze grammes… Ca fera deux-vingt et sept euros et deux-vingt et cinq centimes s’il vous plait.
- Tenez, voici un billet de deux-vingt et dix tout neuf !
- Et voici votre monnaie, deux-vingt et quinze centimes et un comprimé d’aspirine.
- Merci bonne journée !
- De même !
Why not use the existing septante, octante, neunante?
People are actually using huitante and not octante.
Regions use septante, huitante and neunante outside France and especially in Switzerland.
idk i was tired and i tought it was the funniest thing
confirming it’s funny
I’d actually be down for huitante, in order to keep the latin root like other numbers instead of the greek one
Neunante always struck me as a bit weird (although much better than the math thingy).
Neuvante would seem a more reasonable derivation from neuf.
Would also make it closer to other latin languages like Italian and Spanish.
Ask the guys in Modern times who decided that fick it we will go for the nonsensical method.
Depends where though, Belgium and Swiss use septante…
Yes, they are the sensible players in this game
Wait until you hear what the Danes do.
Why is “97” “7 + [-½+5] x 20” in Danish?
No kidding. It’s the sort of thing that makes you think about how different people process info differently
TIL that there’s actually (kinda but not really) a method to the madness that is our numbers 😄
Normal children usually gain fluency in their native language by age 5. Danish children need to wait until age 7.
I think this actually roots in the problems of conversion to base ten from base twelve. Not sure though, maybe I remembered this wrong.
Being lazy and not going to look it up. I can’t help it to wonder if it’s also based in Sumerian’s base 60
It’s base 20.
80 in French is 4 x 20. A long time ago, 60 was “trois-vingt”, 3 x 20. We still have a hospital in Paris called “Hopital des Quinze-Vingts”, 15 x 20 because it used to have 300 beds.
Oh, neat! Thanks for clearing this up.
Deutsch: 2andThirty
Dickensian English: in the year eighteen hundred four-and-thirty
Much more regular than English where you have seven-teen but then seventy-one. To be consistent you’d need to switch to either teen-seven or one-seventy.
