Seventy, Ninety, Septante, Nonante: How to Say French Numbers Without Freezing

Above sixty, French still counts in twenties — a medieval habit the Académie française documents in its own dictionary. And since the spelling reform published in the Journal officiel on 6 December 1990, these numbers can be written two different ways, both correct. Here is how to build them, write them, and above all recognise them at speaking speed.

Why does French say soixante-dix instead of septante?

Because a much older counting layer survives inside modern French. The Académie française explains it plainly: "au Moyen Âge, on avait coutume en France de compter de vingt en vingt" — in the Middle Ages, France counted in twenties — a system "utilisé par les Celtes et par les Normands". Quatre-vingts is literally four twenties.

Regular forms did exist, and still do. Septante, octante and nonante "figurent dans toutes les éditions du Dictionnaire", the Académie notes. It was in the seventeenth century, "sous l'influence de Vaugelas et de Ménage", that soixante-dix, quatre-vingts and quatre-vingt-dix took over educated usage and then the school standard.

This matters for English speakers more than it looks. English is fully regular here — seventy, eighty, ninety — so the instinct is to treat French numbers as an arithmetic puzzle. They are not. Nobody in France computes 4 × 20 + 17 before saying quatre-vingt-dix-sept. These are memorised blocks, exactly like eleven and twelve in English. You learn them by hearing them, not by reasoning.

Where are septante, huitante and nonante actually used?

They are standard in Belgium and in French-speaking Switzerland. The Académie française records that they "restent connus dans l'usage parlé de nombreuses régions de l'Est et du Midi de la France, ainsi qu'en Acadie", and adds that nothing forbids using them, but that compared with current usage in France they are perceived as regional or dated.

The crowdsourced survey Français de nos régions, run by linguist Mathieu Avanzi with roughly 15,000 online respondents between 2015 and 2025, maps the picture. In Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland, septante and nonante approach 100 %. In France, usage rarely exceeds 15 %, except along the Swiss border: 56 % in Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, 51 % in the Pays de Gex, 46 % in Thonon-les-Bains, and 26 to 32 % in the Ain, Haute-Savoie, Jura, Doubs and Saône-et-Loire departments.

For 80, Switzerland is more divided: huitante dominates in the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg, competes with quatre-vingts in Valais, and is very rare in Geneva and the Jura arc. As for octante, the same survey collected it from only 57 people out of about 15,000 — 0.4 %. It has all but vanished.

The practical rule: understand both systems, produce the one your listener uses. Learning with a Belgian or Swiss teacher is no handicap. But if you are sitting a DELF exam in France, working with a Paris office or calling a French administration, soixante-dix and quatre-vingt-dix are what you will hear.

How do you build any number between 60 and 100?

Four building blocks are enough.

• 60 to 69: soixante plus the unit. 61 = soixante et un, 62 = soixante-deux, 69 = soixante-neuf.
• 70 to 79: soixante plus the numbers 10 to 19. 70 = soixante-dix, 71 = soixante et onze, 72 = soixante-douze, 79 = soixante-dix-neuf.
• 80 to 89: quatre-vingts, then the unit. 80 = quatre-vingts, 81 = quatre-vingt-un, 85 = quatre-vingt-cinq.
• 90 to 99: quatre-vingt plus the numbers 10 to 19. 90 = quatre-vingt-dix, 91 = quatre-vingt-onze, 97 = quatre-vingt-dix-sept, 99 = quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.

Then there is the small word et. The rule is short: it links the ten to un in vingt et un, trente et un, quarante et un, cinquante et un, soixante et un, and once with onze, in soixante et onze. The Office québécois de la langue française is explicit about the rest: "il n'y a pas de et dans les mots représentant les nombres 81 et 91". So it is quatre-vingt-un and quatre-vingt-onze, with no et.

English speakers should note the reverse trap too. British English inserts and after the hundred — two hundred and thirty-four. French does not: deux cent trente-quatre, cent un, mille un. The only exceptions are fixed expressions for an indefinite quantity, such as les mille et une nuits.

When do you use a hyphen, and when do you add an s?

Two spellings coexist, and both are official.

The traditional rule, as the Office québécois de la langue française states it: hyphens go only between numbers that are both below one hundred, and only when they are not already linked by et. That gives trente-cinq mille, cent trente-cinq, cent trente et un, soixante et onze.

The 1990 rule: you may also put hyphens between every element of a number, whether or not the parts are below one hundred and whether or not they are linked by et. That gives cent-trente-cinq, soixante-et-onze, deux-mille-huit-cent-vingt-quatre. The Académie française, which published these rectifications in the Journal officiel of 6 December 1990, settles the matter in one sentence: "Aucune des deux graphies ne peut être tenue pour fautive." Neither spelling can be considered wrong.

The s follows a single rule: vingt and cent take an s when they are multiplied and not immediately followed by another numeral. Hence quatre-vingts étudiants and six cents exemplaires, but quatre-vingt-trois ans and trois cent mille euros. Mille as a numeral never varies.

The only real advice: pick one spelling and keep it consistent within a document. A CV that mixes both will not be marked wrong, but it will look careless.

How do you tell the time?

In writing, the francophone standard is the 24-hour clock. The Office québécois de la langue française states that time is expressed "selon une période de 24 heures, soit de 0 à 23", with the symbol h "toujours précédé et suivi d'un espacement": 0 h, 8 h 30, 18 h 15, 21 h 45. There is no French equivalent of a.m. and p.m., and those abbreviations are not used.

Spoken French does something else. When the context is obvious, speakers drop back to twelve hours: six heures et quart, sept heures moins le quart, huit heures et demie, midi, minuit. But in stations, airports, medical appointments and work calendars, the long form dominates: dix-huit heures quinze. If you book a train or a doctor in France, that is the form you will be given, and mishearing dix-huit for dix is a very common way to miss an appointment.

How do you read prices, phone numbers and large figures?

Three French habits English speakers have to unlearn.

• The comma is the decimal separator: 12,50 € is read douze euros cinquante. The full stop separates nothing.
• Thousands are separated by a space, never a comma: 1 500, 25 000, 1 200 000. An English-style 1,500 reads as one point five in France.
• The euro symbol goes after the number: 45 €, not € 45.

The telephone is where French numbers do the most damage. A French number is read in pairs of digits: 06 12 34 56 78 becomes zéro six, douze, trente-quatre, cinquante-six, soixante-dix-huit. English speakers used to reading digits one by one — oh six, one two, three four — suddenly have to decode soixante-dix-huit at conversational speed with nothing written in front of them. Getting a teacher or a friend to dictate phone numbers, prices and departure times, and writing them down, is the highest-yield exercise of your first weeks.

What these figures do not tell you

The Français de nos régions survey is a crowdsourced online study: respondents opted in, they are not a representative sample of the population, and it measures what people report saying rather than what they actually say. The orders of magnitude — near-universal in Belgium and Switzerland, a minority in France except near the border — are solid. The decimal points are not.

More importantly, these rules solve a problem most learners no longer have after a month. Building quatre-vingt-dix-sept is not hard. Recognising it inside a sentence spoken at normal speed, with no time to calculate, is much harder. That is ear training, not logic, and no grammar explanation replaces it.

And there is an answer native speakers use constantly that textbooks never print: ask for a repeat. Saying "vous pouvez me le redire plus lentement ?" and then repeating the number back for confirmation is not a sign of weakness. It is what anyone does on the phone when an account number is dictated to them. Learning that phrase is sometimes worth more than another lesson on the vigesimal system.

At Frenchee, numbers are practised where they actually cause trouble: out loud, live, with qualified native teachers who dictate prices, times and phone numbers until recognition becomes automatic. Classes are held by video, one-to-one or in small groups of three to five students, with no subscription.

Sources

• Académie française, Dictionnaire, Questions de langue, on septante, octante and nonante: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/QDL078
• Académie française, Dictionnaire, annex "Orthographes recommandées", rectifications published in the Journal officiel of 6 December 1990: https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/annexes/orthographes-recommandees.html
• Office québécois de la langue française, Vitrine linguistique, "Déterminants numéraux : trait d'union et pluriel": https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/23494/la-typographie/nombres/ecriture-des-determinants-numeraux
• Français de nos régions, Mathieu Avanzi, "Septante et nonante": https://francaisdenosregions.com/2024/11/16/septante-et-nonante/