French Numbers: How To Count To A Million

French numbers just like their English counterparts come in two flavors: cardinal** (e.g. un, deux, trois…** / one, two, three…) and ordinal** (e.g. premier, deuxième, troisième…** / first, second, third…). The good thing is that, apart from premier** / first, ordinal numbers** use their cardinal** cousins as roots, in most cases merely adding a -ième** ending to them.

1. Cardinal Numbers:

As in English, cardinal French numbers can be divided in two: numbers which are unique words and numbers which are a combination of other numbers.

Unique Numbers: from **** to sixteen, all numbers are unique words. So are the tens from 20 to 60. After that, hundreds use the unique base cent, thousands use mille, millions use million like English and billions use milliard.

† Note that even though 40, 50 and 60 are unique words, their roots are still quite recognizable (e.g. quatre for quarante, cinq for cinquante and six for soixante).

• Here the x in soixante is pronounced like the s in the word sound.

Numbers built on Combinations of other Numbers: the words for the remaining French numbers, at least up to 999 billion, use different combinations of the 26 numbers above.

First combination: 17, 18 and 19 use the words for ten (e.g. dix) and the words for seven, eight and nine (e.g. sept, huit and neuf).

Second combination: numbers from 21 to 69, except those ending with a 1 (e.g. 21, 31, 41, 51 and 61), use a combination of the words for the corresponding tens and units (e.g. vingt – deux / twenty-two, trente – trois / thirty-three,quarante – quatre / forty-four, etc…). This is the same construction as English (e.g. twenty – two, thirty – three, forty – four, etc…). For the 5 numbers ending with a 1, it is necessary to add -et- / -and- between the two words. This addition of -et- also holds for 71 — but not 81 and 91 — even though the rules governing it are different.

Third combination: numbers from 70 to 79 behave as if you’d started counting again at sixty. 70 is soixante-dix / sixty-ten, 71 soixante-et-onze / sixty-eleven, 72 soixante-douze / sixty-twelve, etc…

Fourth combination: 80 doesn’t follow on from 70. Instead, 80 uses a figurative multiplication: quatre-vingts, literally four-twenties (or four times twenty). As with the 70’s, the 80’s behave as if the counter was reset, this time at 80. 80 is quatre-vingts / four-twenties, 81 quatre-vingts-un / four-twenties-one, 82 quatre-vingts-deux / four-twenties-two, etc…

The 90’s follow on from the 80’s in the same way the 70’s continued on from the 60’s; this time the counter continues from 80:

Fifth combination: hundreds are built around cent. From 100 to 199, numbers use the following formula: cent + number with number being drawn from the 100 numbers we’ve already seen.

From 200 to 999, the formula is number1 + cent + number2 with number1 going from 2 to 9 and number2 from 1 to 99.

Note that when cent is not followed by another number, it takes an -s ending to reflect the plural.

Beyond 999, numbers use mille to indicate thousands in the same way that numbers use cent to indicate hundreds, except that mille is invariant and never takes an -s. For 1 million to 999 million, use million (e.g. 1,200,570: un million deux cent mille cinq cent soixante-dix). For 1 billion to 999 billion, use milliard (e.g. 7,382,570,106: sept milliard trois cent quatre-vingts-deux million cinq cent soixante-dix mille cent six).

2. Ordinal Numbers:

As previously stated at the beginning of this lesson, ordinal numbers build on the root of their cardinal cousins by adding a –ième ending. The only exception is premier / first which doesn’t follow the rule at all. Beyond this, you need to keep track of only three things:

a) when a cardinal number ends in -e, the corresponding ordinal number drops the e before adding the –ième (e.g. quatre/four è quatrième/fourth, onze/eleven è onzième/eleventh).

b) the number cinq/five adds a -u before adding the –ième: cinquième.

c) the number neuf/nine transforms the final -f into a -v before adding the –ième: neuvième

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