Every language has a fleet of small sub-languages. Examples: how you count, the names of days of the week and months of the year, how you name relatives, and so on. Counting is especially important, because everybody loves buying stuff, and that means a trip to the marché.
French markets often feature extremely elaborate motorized stalls that fold themselves up hydraulically and turn themselves into a truck, ready to head to tomorrow's market in some nearby town; these often have digital cash registers, a boon for monolingual tourists. But at simpler stalls, it's up to you to understand prices quoted orally. I'm not a big fan of endless flashcard drills, but for numbers I make an exception. When there are ten people in line behind you, rapidly comprehending six euros quarante-neuf centimes is a good skill to have.
My French language CD-ROM (about which more in a future post) made a clever point: the terms for 30, 40, 50, and 60 all end in a "t" sound, which makes them distinctive. Actually, I learned that the hard way. The first few times I heard something like cinquante neuf euros, I heard it as cinq ont neuf euros. How many is "ont"? Is that... eight? Wait, eight is huit. Is "ont" some kind of wacky "dozen"-like quantity word? Auuugh!
That last idea is not too far-fetched. In most Francophone countries, the way you say eighty is literally "four twenties": quatre-vingts. To continue the lunacy, ninety-two is literally "eighty-twelve"... which, recursively, is "four-twenties-twelve": quatre-vingt-douze. Because eighteen is "ten-eight," ninety-eight is quatre-vingt-dix-huit. I am sure French did not devise this to kick the legs out from under my confidence, but it worked for a while.
I don't mean to suggest I've mastered French numbers yet, but I don't try to count up to "ont" any more.
I learned to speak French in the Canton de Vaud in Switzerland and, as a result, missed the "correct" way to count for a couple of years. I must say, huitante for 80 does seem to make ever so much more sense. But then again, the Swiss are arguably very sensible in so many respects.
ReplyDelete