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Peter Fogg you asked: "But why?" I'm not really able to answer your
question. A possible reason may however consist in differences between
dialects and something like a "high French". If I remember right there
are also parts in France where very strong dialects are spoken. There
seem to exist considerable efforts to "protect" the French language.
In those parts which I visited people couldn't - at least not
immediately - understand septente (70) or nonante (90).

Marcel

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Peter Fogg  wrote:
> Marcel Tschudin wrote:
>>
>> It's not only the names between 80 and 90 but also those between 70
>> and 79 in France 79 would be 60+19 in Switzerland and possibly also
>> some other French speaking parts (Belgium?) it would correspond to 79.
>> In proper French their are no names for 70, 80 and 90. In some French
>> speaking parts they have at least names for 70 and 90.
>
> But why? � This appears to be a regression, in that as late as the early
> twentieth century in France the simpler form was favoured, although modern
> French has gone (what seems to me to be) backwards in using, when speaking,
> the more convoluted form, while linguistic satellites like the relevant
> parts of Switzerland and Belgium, and Canada too have declined to follow
> (well, why would they?).
>
> I have personal evidence of this.� My wife tells me that her grandfather,
> born in the late nineteenth century and never educated beyond a
> primary-school level, always referred to nonante and never said
> quatre-vingt-dix as everyone else did, and as my wife was taught in school.
>
> She thought it was quaint and old fashioned, part of the old chap's charm,
> but it appears to me to be quite the other way around.� I've been consulting
> the modern oracle and have learned much about how these words for French
> numbers may have originated, but nothing about why France changed these
> spoken numbers in what seems like such an illogical way.
>
>
>
>
>

   

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