The international discussion forum - View Single Post - Tokyo Governor: French fails as international language because it can't count numbers

Yau · 07-13-2005, 10:04 AM

i believe most french learners should experience the difficulty of counting number in French. 70 = 60 + 10; 97 = 2x40 + 17. But then I ignored all the complexity and remember, let say, "quatre-vingt dix" as a single word, then everything became much easier for me.

I think most french learners can finally overcome the problem quite easily too and see how tokyo governor's comment is misleading, but I'm always curious how French see their number system. What's the origin of it? Does it imply that Ancient French adopted a base-7 number system (using digit from 0 to 7)?

07-13-2005, 10:04 AM	#2 (permalink)
Yau Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 209 Yau is on a distinguished road	i believe most french learners should experience the difficulty of counting number in French. 70 = 60 + 10; 97 = 2x40 + 17. But then I ignored all the complexity and remember, let say, "quatre-vingt dix" as a single word, then everything became much easier for me. I think most french learners can finally overcome the problem quite easily too and see how tokyo governor's comment is misleading, but I'm always curious how French see their number system. What's the origin of it? Does it imply that Ancient French adopted a base-7 number system (using digit from 0 to 7)?
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