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| French numbers are sort of -- okay very -- confusing... |
It was an interesting lesson to be sure. Melanie and I already knew how to count from 1 to 10 (in fact, Melanie could count to 15) but after that is where French numbers sort of fall off the rails.
Through 16 every number has a unique name, but the French people never came up with names for 17 through 19, so instead they say: "10 7", "10 8", and "10 9". (Dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf.)
They have a unique name for 20, but for 21 they say "20 and 1". Okay, that's pretty easy, 22 must be "20 and 2", right? Nope, it's just "20 2", they only say the "and" for 21, 31, 41, etc.
Other than that, everything is pretty normal until you get to 70. The French never came up with a word for 70 so they say "60 10", "60 11", "60 12", etc.
They don't have a word for 80 either, so for some reason they decided to say: "4 20" (like 4 times 20). After that you've got "4 20 1", "4 20 2" and so on. STOP! I meant "4 20 and 1, 4 20 2" etc.
When they got to 90 the French continued the "4 20" thing with: "4 20 10", "4 20 11", "4 20 12", etc.
My matchbox derby car in cub scouts had the number "99" and I came in 2nd. Since that day 99 has been my lucky number. In french that's: "quatre vingt dix-neuf" (quatre (4) vin (20) dix (10) neuf (9). Ugh. I may need to find a [shorter] lucky number while I'm here...
I used to think our French teacher was nice, but now I'm wondering if she is a sociopath as she seems to delight in revealing all the complexities of her native tongue. (Tonight we learned that there are 3 different versions of the word "in": male, female, and plural. Ugh.)
Oh well, just have to take it a lesson at a time I guess. Melanie and I can count to 100 in French now, and the other day at the store the cashier told me how much I owed and I didn't have to frantically look for a numeric total on the cash register. (It's not always visible to the customer.) So progress is being made!
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