I Can't Count.

Ok, so I finally got around to looking at French numbers beyond ten (or eleven, since that's how many postcards I bought and stamps I needed) (oh, wait, I also knew fourteen, since that's how many months old Sophie is).  And it is crazy.  After the 60's, French numbers make you do MATH as you speak!!  I can't do that!  German was confusing enough, switching the numbers around so that you had to say five-and-twenty or seven-and-seventy.  In French you have to "stack" number words to add up to the correct amount!

For example, to say seventy, you say "soixante-dix".  Literally sixty-ten.  For seventy-one?  "soixante et onze", literally sixty-and-eleven.  This is horrible!!!  Well, it gets worse:

Eighty is "quatre-vingt", or four-twenty.  That doesn't even make any sense.  Why would you switch from addition in the 70's to multiplication in the 80's????  AAAAHHHH!

And ninety-three.  Wanna hazard a guess?  It's "quatre-vingt-treize".  That's right:  four-twenty-thirteen.

...yeah.

BAH!!!  Where do these people come up with this stuff?  Multiplication AND addition in one number word??  How does that make sense??  I thought France was supposed to be a hotbed of enlightenment, rights of man, rationalizing weights and measures, that sort of thing.  THIS GOES AGAINST ALL REASON!!!!!

Voltaire, why didn't you fix it?  You, of all people, should have
seen the irrational nature of your mother tongue...