I'm not learning French

No mystery at all really. It is so much easier to calculate 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, and 14 lbs to the Stone than to use the metric system. N'est-il pas ?

Exactly right LeRoy, the vigesimal pattern of expressing 80 as four times twenty is of Celtic origin and is the origin of twenty shillings to the pound. The greater mystery is twelve pence to the pound. That supposedly originated in the Roman Empire. It was re-introduced by Charlemagne in his Holy Roman Empire and became the European standard for many centuries, but how the Romans got there is another question. France did have the versions used by the Belgians and Swiss but for whatever reason decided to adopt the vigesimal system as their way of counting.

France introduced the franc in 1795 to replace the livre tournois that had been abolished during the revolution, thus decimalised the old 12, 20, 1 system. Similarly the old Troyes system of pounds and ounces for weights based on the silver standard in that city in medieval times was replaced. Then measures, liquids and so on...They also imposed decimalisation in some countries occupied during the Napoleonic period. For quite a long time 20 francs were referred to as a livre, basically being stamped out as the French standardised their language in education. So, historically it is all quite recent.

I just came across this and that seems to explain it quite well....

I read some where that the Celts had a number system based on 20 and that Quatre-vingts was a hold over. I suppose 20 shillings was for the same reason.

Thanks terry, Quebec is on my places to avoid now too. Mind you, given those who go to university to do French is Switzerland learn the quatre-vingts and so on, I still had to chuckle thinking about a Belgian arriving in French CH with his/her octante and not knowing huitante, and vice versa... Such fun.

With that I shall now go shopping and stick to what they use here for my sanity ;-)

Andrew/Brian -- I always used octante in Belgium. Never heard huitante, or novante for that matter. If memory serves septante/octante/nonante were the original French numbers and for some reason which I don't know and I'm not about to research it got changed to quatre-vingts etc. just to make life complicated. :-) But wait till you get to Quebec and they ask you how many "verges" of cloth you want! Metres, centimetres, far too modern.

Andrew

Our local UIA (Université Inter-Ages) used to run "Anglophone" courses, but cancelled then due to "lack of demand."
I tried to suggest that "French for Beginners" would be a better title to attract newly arrived Brits. but I was unable to persuade them that "Anglophone" was just another foreign word that potential students wouldn't understand!

Haha, Andrew just got back from 10 days in Italian speaking Switzerland where the French they learn is Romande. I used quatre-vingt several times which I had to correct to huitante when we used French instead of Ticinese (don't go into forms of Italian, please). Depending on who one speaks to they use nonante and in some cases, having learned a dialect, novante! Please, please, please do not let anything make me need to go to Belgium, it takes long enough relearning all the quatre-vingt-quinze type counting as it is. When I met my Francophone educated (but Romande) OH she habitually used the Swiss versions since we used French for the first three years as our common language and got me in the habit of those versions. Even now she sometimes stumbles and as fluent as her French is, will say nonante-et-un instead of....

@ Terry, swearing in French is essential for day to day life, as is counting and out loud for many of my customers who can't seem to count...!

@ Ian - try counting in swiss/belgian French it gets some very strange looks and a laugh ;-) (septante, huitante (or octante), nonante)

Unfortunately many institutions no longer have the money to run fle (français langue étrangère) courses. I used to teach in a CCI and an IUT and at times taught french to foreigners (chinese students in my case!) but that wasn't open to the public, many courses that used to run for foreigners have been scrapped for financial reasons :-(

Mais courage à celles et ceux qui ont du mal à apprendre la langue de Molière ;-)

Little and often (everyday several times a day) and from as many sources as possible is my advice and don't worry if you don't understand everything, that's normal and has to be accepted as part of the learning process ;-)

hi, Not sure if anyone has mentioned this as I haven't read through the entire discussion, but I really improved my french by attending classes for foreigners, these were free and I did about 200 hours. Have a search for you nearest CIBC . ( I went in as I was not confident enough to phone!) I made an appointment and was assessed, then allocated a course. I could do as much as I wanted a week and ended up doing 3 mornings. The group was full of foreigners wanting to learn french . We learnt some of "The rules " but also di quite a bit of conversation. If you want to learn quickly then this world for me. I was assessed after the 200 hours and the difference between the before and after was amazing!

Good luck

Ian,

Doesn't look so good in binary! ;-)

Yes, numbers and swearing are the last two things to come naturally. I do swear in French now after 50-odd years of speaking the language but I still count in English. Go figure.

Mike,

Same age as me then. As an ex IT personage I like to quote my age in hexadecimal which means I'm only 43 !

I still have a goal of learning French, it feels like unfinished business. As we only go to France once per year on our family holiday it seems like an awful lot of effort just for one week. Our daughter who attended the International School at Sophia Antipolis speaks French like a native. Mind you she lives in Clapham Junction which has more French residents than English nowadays...

This year (June) we spent a week at La Gaude near Nice. Someone built a bloody great mountain (St Jeannot) behind the village so that the clouds dumped all the rain on our villa. At least it was warm rain.

Ian,

Even brilliant linguists seem revert to their first language when working with numbers. But I don't have a problem with counting in 20s - having reached the age of three score and seventeen......

I'm one of them too Ian!

There is no like button on here for individual replies (would be too tedious I guess), but I like very much Sandy's and Ian's replys. :-) :-)

Some people's brains are simply not amenable to learning languages. I lived in Grasse for 3 years but never progressed beyond the "Je voudrais ca" grade. In the staff canteen I ate a lot of "meme chose" based on what the person ahead of me in the queue was eating. As an Engineer I struggled terribly with why the French didn't have a word for '80' and that distracted me from concentrating on the language lecons.

Further explanation to boot

http://grammarist.com/usage/to-boot/

I like that Sandy.
If you have satellite TV, you can watch Euronews in a number of European languages. If you know how to tweak your decoder, you can watch the news in English, then again in French. It can be a big help when you know what to expect.