French Numbers 1-100 (and Beyond): The Complete Chart

French numbers 1-20: the words you memorize

Learning how to count in French starts with a short list. Seventeen words carry the entire system. Zéro through seize (0-16) are unique, and 17, 18, and 19 are already assembled from parts you know: dix-sept is literally "ten-seven."

In the charts, capital letters mark the syllable you lean on, though French stress is far lighter than English stress. Where a hint says "nasal," the vowel comes partly down your nose, so let it buzz.

Chant 11 to 16 as one block: onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize. They pair off by sound and stick fast. Notice too that quatorze and quinze are just quatre and cinq wearing a coat, which is a free memory hook.

French numbers 20 to 69: one clean pattern

From 20 to 69, numbers in French work the way English numbers do. Take the ten, add the unit, join them with a hyphen: vingt-deux (22), quarante-sept (47), soixante-trois (63). Five words unlock fifty numbers.

One wrinkle handles every number ending in 1. When the unit is un, French slips in et (and) and drops the hyphens around it.

So the shape is: et un for the 1s, hyphens for everything else. Say vingt et un out loud a few times, because that little et is the single most-forgotten word on this page.

And if a feminine noun follows, un becomes une: vingt et une pages (21 pages), soixante et une minutes (61 minutes). One is the only French number that changes for gender.

French numbers 70 to 99: the part everyone warns you about

Here's the honest version. After 69, French stops inventing new words for the tens and counts the rest of the way in twenties. So 70 is soixante-dix ("sixty-ten"), 80 is quatre-vingts ("four-twenties"), and 90 is quatre-vingt-dix ("four-twenties-ten"). The champion is 97: quatre-vingt-dix-sept, four-twenties-ten-seven.

It looks like arithmetic homework. It isn't. It's one pattern repeated three times, and you already know every word in it.

Why French counts in twenties

Old French ran two counting systems side by side. One was decimal, straight from Latin: septante, octante, nonante. The other was vigesimal, counting in twenties, and it reached well past 80. Paris still keeps the receipt. The Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts, founded in 1260 by Louis IX, is named for the 300 blind residents it was built to house: quinze-vingts, fifteen twenties, 300.

Where the base-20 habit came from is still argued by linguists. The usual explanation points to the Celtic languages spoken in Gaul before Latin arrived, and Welsh does still say pedwar ugain ("four twenties") for 80, though direct Gaulish evidence is thin. The outcome isn't in doubt: the vigesimal forms won in Paris, the Académie française standardized them, and septante and nonante were pushed out to the edges of the French-speaking world, where they are still very much alive.

How to build any number from 70 to 99

Three rules, and you never memorize thirty new words.

1. 70-79 is soixante plus a teen. Take sixty, then add 10 through 19. 70 is soixante-dix, 75 is soixante-quinze, 79 is soixante-dix-neuf.
2. 80-89 is quatre-vingt plus a unit. Take four-twenties, then add 1 through 9. 80 is quatre-vingts, 85 is quatre-vingt-cinq.
3. 90-99 is quatre-vingt plus a teen. Same start, now add 10 through 19. 90 is quatre-vingt-dix, 96 is quatre-vingt-seize, 99 is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.

The question to ask yourself is never "what's the word for ninety?" It's "which twenty am I in, and how far past it?" 94 is four twenties plus fourteen, so quatre-vingt-quatorze. 78 is sixty plus eighteen, so soixante-dix-huit.

Two traps hide inside. 71 keeps the et from the twenties pattern (soixante et onze), while 81 and 91 refuse it (quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-onze). And 80 standing alone is spelled quatre-vingts with an s that disappears the second another number follows.

The full French numbers 70-99 chart

One pronunciation gift hides in that chart: the t in quatre-vingt is never pronounced in 81 through 99. Quatre-vingt-un is "kat-ruh-van-UHN," not "vant-un." Compare that with vingt-deux, where the t does sound. If Spanish felt tidier here, it was: Spanish numbers keep a separate word for every ten right up to noventa.

Which regions use which

The split is sharper than most textbooks admit, so it's worth getting right.

Belgium says septante (70) and nonante (90), but keeps quatre-vingts for 80. That asymmetry surprises people, and it's the single fact learners most often get wrong.

Switzerland says septante and nonante everywhere in the French-speaking cantons. For 80 it splits: huitante is the form in Vaud, Valais and Fribourg, while Geneva, Neuchâtel, Bern and Jura say quatre-vingts, like France. Octante turns up as a dialect form in parts of Switzerland but you'll rarely hear it today.

Septante and nonante are also standard in the Aosta Valley in Italy and in the former Belgian colonies: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Wiktionary tags both words for Acadia and Savoy too. You can check the full label list on Wiktionary's septante entry.

None of this is slang or error. These are older Latin-derived forms that simply never got overruled, because Belgium and Switzerland were never bound by the Académie française. Learn the French forms first since they dominate media and exams, then recognize the others. A Belgian will understand soixante-dix perfectly; you just may not hear it back.

French numbers 100, 1,000 and beyond

Past 99, numbers in French get easy again. Cent (100) and mille (1,000) simply sit in front of the numbers you already have, and no et ever follows a hundred.

Cent and mille behave like numbers, so they never take un: 100 is cent, 1,000 is mille. Million and milliard behave like nouns, so they need un, they pluralize, and they take de before whatever they count: un million d'habitants (a million inhabitants), deux milliards d'euros.

Years are read as plain numbers, so 2026 is deux mille vingt-six. And France writes numbers the continental way: a comma for decimals, a thin space for thousands. 1 500,75 is what an English speaker would write as 1,500.75.

French numbers pronunciation: the liaison traps

This is the section that separates a learner from someone who sounds fluent. Several French numbers change their final sound depending on what comes next, and six and dix are the worst offenders. They keep a habit from Old French: silent before a consonant, a z-sound before a vowel, an s-sound when nothing follows.

Four details worth memorizing.

Neuf is stingy with its v. The f becomes a v before exactly two words in modern French, ans and heures, so neuf ans is "nuh-VAHN" and neuf heures is "nuh-VUHR." Everywhere else it stays "nuhf."

Vingt splits its personality. The t sounds in 21 through 29, so vingt-cinq is "vant-SANK." It stays silent in 81 through 99, so quatre-vingt-deux is "kat-ruh-van-DUH." Same letters, opposite behavior.

Quatre-vingts links with a z. Because 80 carries a written s, quatre-vingts ans sounds like "kat-ruh-van-ZAHN."

Huit and onze push words away. Both behave as though they start with an aspirated h, so there's no elision and no liaison in front of them: le huit, le onze, never "l'huit." That's a general habit of French numerals, not a quirk of those two words.

If the throaty r in quatre and trois still fights you, that's normal. It's one of the sounds that lands French in the middle of most difficulty rankings, and you can see where it sits among the hardest languages to learn.

Spelling French numbers: the s that comes and goes

Three written rules cover almost every mistake French speakers themselves make.

Vingt and cent take an s when multiplied, and lose it when another number follows. Write quatre-vingts euros, but quatre-vingt-deux euros. Write deux cents personnes, but deux cent trois personnes. That's why 80 is quatre-vingts and 90 is quatre-vingt-dix with no s. The one exception: they keep the s before million and milliard, which are nouns, so quatre-vingts millions and deux cents millions are both correct.

Mille never takes an s. Not ever, no matter what multiplies it: deux mille, cent mille, trois cent mille. (The noun mille meaning "mile" does pluralize, but that's a different word.)

Use et in 21, 31, 41, 51, 61 and 71, and hyphens everywhere else. Traditional spelling links elements below one hundred with hyphens unless et is present. So you write vingt et un, trente et un, quarante et un, cinquante et un, soixante et un, and soixante et onze with no hyphens around the et. But 81 and 91 take none: quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-onze. Neither does 101: cent un.

What the 1990 spelling reform changed

The 1990 rectifications, published in the Journal officiel and approved by the Académie française, allow a simpler option: hyphenate every element of a number without exception. That gives vingt-et-un, trente-et-un, cent-deux and deux-cents.

Both spellings are correct today, and the Académie says so plainly in its note on hyphens in compound numbers. The reform exists for a reason worth knowing: hyphens remove real ambiguity. Soixante et un tiers means 60 + 1/3, while soixante-et-un tiers means 61/3.

Pick one system and stay in it. French schools still teach the traditional spelling, so vingt et un is the safer default for exams, and nobody will mark vingt-et-un wrong.

Ordinal numbers, and using French numbers today

Ordinals (first, second, third) come almost free once you have the cardinals. Add -ième to the number, and drop a final e first.

Now put the numbers to work. Four everyday jobs cover most of what you'll need this month.

Prices. Say the euros, then the cents, with nothing in between: 12,50 € is douze euros cinquante. Ask with Ça fait combien ? ("sah fay kom-BYAN") or C'est combien ?

Phone numbers. French mobile numbers have ten digits and are read in pairs, as five two-digit numbers. So 06 12 34 56 78 is zéro six, douze, trente-quatre, cinquante-six, soixante-dix-huit. A group starting with zero gets read digit by digit. This is where the 70s and 90s ambush you in real life, which is exactly why the chart above is worth a second read. Listening drills help more than reading here, and our comparison of the best apps to learn French covers which ones actually train your ear.

Ages. J'ai vingt-cinq ans means "I'm 25" (French says you have years). Watch the liaison: "van-sank ZAHN."

Dates. Use plain cardinals with le: le quatorze juillet (14 July), le vingt-cinq décembre. The one exception is the first of the month, which takes the ordinal: le premier mai. Pair that with the days of the week in French and you can fix any appointment.

Your homework tonight: say your phone number out loud in French, then your age, then today's date. That's three real sentences built from this page. If the vigesimal maths still stings, take heart. Spanish and Italian keep a tidy word for every ten, and you can see how they compare on our list of the easiest languages to learn. Everything else French asks of a beginner lives on the French hub.