Numbers in French

0 to 20

11 to 16 have their own words; from 17 you build them: dix-sept is ten-seven. Un becomes une before a feminine noun: une heure, vingt et une pages.

Tens, and the famous 70 to 99

From 70, French counts in twenties: 70 is sixty plus ten, so 71 is soixante et onze (sixty and eleven) and 77 is soixante-dix-sept (sixty-ten-seven). 80 is four twenties, quatre-vingts, and 90 to 99 are four twenties plus ten to nineteen. It's a leftover of an older way of counting, and once you hear the pattern it stops being strange.

Hundreds, thousands and millions

The rules that trip people up

• Et only for the ones. Vingt et un, trente et un up to soixante et un, and soixante et onze. Never with 81 or 91: quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-onze. And never cent et un: it's cent un.
• Vingt and cent take an s only at the end. Quatre-vingts and deux cents, but quatre-vingt-deux and deux cent trois. One cent on its own never takes an s.
• Mille never changes. Deux mille, dix mille. And no un in front: 1,000 is just mille.
• Million and milliard are nouns. They take an s and de: deux millions d'habitants. And un milliard is an English billion.
• Hyphens. Traditionally only numbers under 100 are hyphenated, except around et: vingt et un, quatre-vingt-deux, deux cent trois. Since the 1990 spelling reform, hyphens everywhere are also correct: vingt-et-un, deux-cent-trois.
• Listen for silent letters. Vingt alone sounds like vin, but its t is heard in 21 to 29 (vingt-deux) and silent again in 81 to 99. Six, huit and dix lose their last sound before a consonant (six livres) and link with a z or t sound before a vowel (six amis, huit heures).

Written numbers use a space for thousands and a comma for decimals: 1 000 and 3,50.

Belgium and Switzerland: septante and nonante

Everyone understands the France forms, so learn those first and recognise the others. Huitante is used in parts of French-speaking Switzerland, such as Vaud and Valais; elsewhere you'll hear quatre-vingts.

Dates

Day, month, year, with no de in between and months and weekdays in lowercase: janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre. Only the first of the month uses an ordinal (le premier); every other day is a plain number (le deux, le trois).

Telling the time

Always say heure(s): il est deux heures, never just il est deux. The 24-hour clock is everyday speech in France, not just for timetables: you'll hear on se voit à dix-neuf heures (see you at 7 p.m.).

Prices

Phone numbers

French phone numbers have ten digits and are written and read in pairs: 06 12 34 56 78 is zéro six, douze, trente-quatre, cinquante-six, soixante-dix-huit. So you'll need 70 to 99 quickly; it's worth practising the pairs out loud.

Ordinals: first, second, third

Add -ième to the number, dropping a final e (quatre → quatrième); cinq adds a u and neuf turns its f into a v. Abbreviations are 1er, 1re, 2e. Kings and centuries use them too, with Roman numerals: le XXIe siècle (vingt et unième), but Louis XIV is read Louis quatorze, a plain number. Only first kings get the ordinal: François Ier, François premier.

Questions