Numbers 0 to 20 Lesson 6 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Counting to twenty in French is like learning a new playground chant: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, and soon your mouth does it on its own. 1 Several numbers hide silent letters: sept sounds like "set" because the p is asleep, and vingt sounds like "van" because the g and the t are asleep. 2 Eleven to sixteen each have their own word ending in -ze (onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize), a bit like English eleven and twelve, which don't say "one-one". 3 From seventeen French builds the number: dix-sept is ten-seven, dix-huit ten-eight and dix-neuf ten-nine, joined with a hyphen. 4 Picture a bakery in Lyon: hold up your thumb and pointing finger and the baker gives you two croissants, because the French start counting on the thumb. 6 6 to 10: six ("seess"), sept ("set", the p is silent), huit ("weet", the h is silent), neuf ("nuhf"), dix ("deess"). 7 The x of six and dix changes: "ss" on its own, silent before a consonant (six pommes, "see POM"), and "z" before a vowel (six amis, "see-za-MEE"). 8 In France people usually start counting on the thumb: thumb is one, thumb and pointing finger are two. 10 17 to 19 are built with a hyphen: dix-sept ("deess-SET"), dix-huit ("deez-WEET"), dix-neuf ("deez-NUHF"); in dix-huit and dix-neuf the x sounds like z. 11 vingt means 20 and sounds like "van", through the nose; the g and t are silent letters left over from the old Latin word viginti. 12 zéro means 0 and sounds like "zay-RO", because é says "ay". 13 "One" has two forms: un for masculine words and une for feminine words, so it is un livre (a book) but une baguette. 14 Jacques a dit ("zhak a DEE") is the French Simon says; sautez dix fois means "jump ten times". 15 La marelle ("la ma-REL") is hopscotch, and children often call out the number of each square as they land. 16 Slang here: "lowkey" means a bit; "pure mental" (Glasgow) means totally mad; "yeah nah" (Australia, New Zealand) means no; "salty" means annoyed; "tidy" (Wales) means good; "butt" (Wales) means mate; "wicked" (Maine) means very. ← previous Tu or vous? Manners in Frenchnext → Numbers 21 to 69↑ back to French This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/6-numbers-0-to-20/