On a similar note: In German, “seven hundred fifty three” would be said as “seven hundred three and fifty”.

At least it’s consistent - starting at “thirteen” , which is “three ten”, up to ninety nine, which is “nine and ninety”, the multiples of ten come last.

It is pretty annoying, though, when a number like 123’456’789 is spoken as 132-465-798, though.

Apparently, it’s because in old Germanic, the numbers were spoken “backwards” (one hundred twenty three being spoken as “three and twenty and hundred”), and we only partially reversed that.

The French is the reason English is a clusterfuck of inconsistent grammar and spelling.

I’ve seen this coutless times, and as a french native I’m getting tired of this, I want to tell you that no french think of it that way.

You know how you have “eleven” “twelve” and then you switch to “xxteen” for the next 6 number ? You never dissociate them, because that’s just the way it is. French are the same “douze”, “treize”… and then suddenly “dix-sept” but nobody dissociate them, this is just one word that means “17”

And then it’s the same with “seventy”, french don’t dissociate 60 and 10 in their mind, it’s just one word. Sure from an ethymologic standpoint it comes from two word but it’s not how we think about it.

When you say “sunday” you never think “day of the sun”, when you say “blueberry”, “blackberry” you don’t think of the color, you think of the particular fruit, everybody can see the origin of the word, but nonetheless the word is one unit.

Anyway. Yes it is weird to learn a new language and see how it evolved into a weird mess, but please know that when you make this kind of comment you don’t look like you are well informed about the french language, you just look like kids that have learned a new word and can’t stop using it everywhere.

This doesn’t apply to all french speaking regions. Switzerland use septante and nonante and in some regions of the country also huitante.