Numbers in French

The default count is un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix. The hard part starts at 70. This article covers 0 to 1000, the notorious 70/80/90 system, the Belgian and Swiss alternatives that fix it, the plural-S rules on cent and quatre-vingt, the pronunciation traps on six, dix and vingt, and the practical contexts (prices, phone numbers, times) where French numbers actually live.

0 to 10: the foundation

The pronunciation traps live on six and dix. Both change depending on what follows.

• Standalone or at the end of a phrase: six is "siss", dix is "diss". "J'en veux six" = zhahn vuh siss.
• Before a consonant: the final consonant goes silent. "Six chats" = see sha. "Dix livres" = dee leevr.
• Before a vowel (liaison): the final consonant turns into a Z sound. "Six enfants" = see-zahn-fahn. "Dix euros" = dee-zuh-ro.

This is not optional; getting it wrong is the single clearest beginner tell on numbers.

11 to 20: the irregular teens

The irregulars run from 11 to 16. From 17 to 19 French gives up and goes compound: dix-sept (10+7), dix-huit (10+8), dix-neuf (10+9), with a hyphen. Vingt is pronounced "van" with a nasal vowel and a silent T in most contexts; the T comes back in compound forms (vingt-deux is "van-tuh-duh"), which is the kind of internal-liaison rule French speakers do without thinking.

20 to 69: regular territory

The pattern is clean: vingt, trente, quarante, cinquante, soixante. Each tens word combines with a unit using a hyphen for 2 through 9.

• 22 = vingt-deux
• 35 = trente-cinq
• 48 = quarante-huit
• 57 = cinquante-sept
• 63 = soixante-trois

The exception is et un. For 21, 31, 41, 51 and 61, French inserts et before un and historically dropped the hyphens: vingt et un, trente et un, quarante et un, cinquante et un, soixante et un. The 1990 spelling reform allows hyphens throughout (vingt-et-un), but the older spaced version still dominates in print. Both are correct.

Note that this et appears only with un. Vingt-deux gets a hyphen and no et; vingt et un gets et and (traditionally) no hyphen.

The 70/80/90 problem

This is the section that throws every English-speaking learner of French, and the section that the Belgians and the Swiss have quietly fixed.

70 is soixante-dix, literally sixty-ten. The count continues by adding to the soixante base, but using the teen forms rather than restarting at un:

71 keeps the et convention (soixante et onze), patterning with vingt et un. 77, 78 and 79 stack two compound numbers (soixante + dix-sept), which is where the cashier-speed parsing problem really begins.

80 is quatre-vingts, literally four-twenties. Note the S: quatre-vingts takes a plural S because it is "four twenties" and the twenties are plural. The S vanishes the moment another number follows.

Two things to notice. First, no et un. It is quatre-vingt-un, not quatre-vingt et un. The et-un convention only applies inside the vingt / trente / quarante / cinquante / soixante decades, not in the quatre-vingt or quatre-vingt-dix decades. Second, the S on vingts is gone the instant anything follows.

90 is quatre-vingt-dix, literally four-twenty-ten. Same logic as 70, but stacked on the quatre-vingt base:

99 is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, four-twenty-ten-nine. It is the most syllable-dense number in the standard French count, and a fair example of why Belgian French opted out.

Belgium and Switzerland: the sane alternatives

Septante (70) and nonante (90) are used in Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both pattern regularly with trente, quarante, cinquante, soixante. Huitante (or octante) is the regular form for 80 in parts of French-speaking Switzerland (Vaud, Valais, Fribourg). Belgium kept quatre-vingts for 80, which is the slightly unusual middle position.

These forms are not slang. A Belgian schoolchild learns septante and nonante from primary school. The Académie française treats them as foreign, which is a position about national identity rather than linguistic merit. If your target country is France or Quebec, learn soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix. If your target is Belgium or Switzerland, learn the regular forms. Travelling across the Francophone world, learn both.

100 and beyond

100 is cent. Like quatre-vingt, cent takes a plural S when it stands alone as a multiple, and loses it the moment another number follows.

• 100 = cent (no S, because it is exactly one hundred, not "hundreds")
• 200 = deux cents (S, because two hundreds)
• 250 = deux cent cinquante (no S, because another number follows)
• 300 = trois cents
• 380 = trois cent quatre-vingts (no S on cent, S on vingts because nothing follows the vingts)

Cent does not take an article: cent personnes, not "un cent personnes". Same goes for mille.

1,000 is mille. Mille never takes an S in any context. Deux mille, trois mille, dix mille, cent mille: the form is invariant.

• 1,000 = mille
• 2,000 = deux mille
• 10,000 = dix mille
• 100,000 = cent mille
• 1,000,000 = un million (this one IS a noun and DOES take an S: deux millions, with de before what is being counted: deux millions de personnes)

The Académie française distinguishes mille (1,000) from the historical mille (a measure of distance, archaic). For practical purposes, mille = 1,000, always, invariant, no S.

Ordinals: first, second, third

The ordinal pattern is mostly regular. Take the cardinal, add -ième, and you have the ordinal.

Premier is the only ordinal with a separate feminine form (première); the rest are invariant for gender. Second / seconde is traditionally used when there are only two items in the series (la seconde guerre mondiale) and deuxième when more could follow, but the distinction is loosely observed. Cinquième adds a U to preserve the K sound. Neuvième changes the F of neuf to a V.

Pronunciation traps

A few mid-count traps worth memorising.

• Vingt: silent T standalone (van), pronounced T inside compounds (vingt-deux = vahn-tuh-duh). The 80s and 90s (quatre-vingt-deux etc.) follow the same pattern.
• Cinq, six, huit, dix: final consonant pronounced when standalone or before a vowel (liaison), silent before a consonant. "Cinq amis" = sank-amee. "Cinq personnes" = sank pair-sonn, with the K still audible. Five is more stable than six and dix in this respect.
• Sept: the P is silent (set), but the T is always pronounced.
• Neuf before heures and ans: the F becomes a V. Neuf heures = nuh-vur. Neuf ans = nuh-vahn. Everywhere else, neuf keeps the F.

Common contexts

Prices. Prices are read with the centimes spoken in full. €2.50 is deux euros cinquante. €36.75 is trente-six euros soixante-quinze. The decimal mark is a comma (virgule), not a point: 36,75 €.

Phone numbers. French phone numbers are read in pairs. 02 35 22 17 84 reads as zéro deux, trente-cinq, vingt-deux, dix-sept, quatre-vingt-quatre. Each pair is a two-digit number, not individual digits. This is where the 70/80/90 system bites hardest, because almost every phone number contains at least one compound decade parsed at speaking speed.

Addresses. Building numbers are ordinary cardinals: "j'habite au quarante-sept, rue de Paris". The article au before the number is standard.

Times. France defaults to the 24-hour clock in writing and most spoken contexts. 14:00 is quatorze heures. 18:30 is dix-huit heures trente. The 12-hour clock survives in casual speech when context fixes the half of the day: "on se voit à huit heures" at the end of a workday means 20:00 without anyone saying vingt heures. Et demie (half past), et quart (quarter past) and moins le quart (quarter to) still appear alongside the numerals.

Cross-references

• The French pillar covers the wider adult-learner approach for French.
• The French alphabet covers the letter names and the accent system that pair with the number system.
• French vocabulary by CEFR covers the frequency-ordered word list these numbers sit inside.
• How to say good morning in French covers the greeting cluster that opens any transaction where numbers actually get used.
• Restaurant phrases in French covers the bill-and-tip context where French numbers are most reliably encountered in the wild.