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French Language Lessons: Counting to 20

Steve Cohen

When you travel in France, it is often handy to be able to say and recognize spoken numbers in French. You may need to say how many of you there are for a table in a restaurant, how many apples you want from the fruit vendor or what room number you are in at a hotel. You may wish to understand the amount you are asked to pay in a shop, how many meters you are told to walk to reach a certain landmark, which platform your train is leaving from and at what time.

To develop your French numbers skill, follow the counting lessons in order. Each lesson builds on the previous ones, so make sure you are confident with each lesson before continuing on to the next. First, use the following lists to master the numbers from 1 to 20. Subsequent lessons (see the navigation bar to the right) expand your knowledge up to 100, to 1,000, to 100,000 and beyond! You can listen to the lesson.

Notes on Pronunciation

French words tend to be accented lightly on the last syllable or the last syllable of a group of words. In rare instances for emphasis or where this is not the case, an accented syllable will be indicated by ALL CAPS. Liaisons are indicated by red, italicized initial consonants (e.g. "Puis-je vous aider?" pronounced as "pwee-zhuh voo zeh-day"). See Guide to Transliteration for more information.

Numbers from 1 to 10

ENGLISH	FRENCH	SAY IT LIKE THIS
1	un (m), une (f)*	u, ewn
2	deux	duh
3	trois	twah
4	quatre	kahtr
5	cinq	sak
6	six	sees
7	sept	seht
8	huit	weet
9	neuf	nuhf
10	dix	dees

*One is the only number that has both a masculine and feminine form.

Numbers from 11 to 20

ENGLISH	FRENCH	SAY IT LIKE THIS
11	onze	ohz
12	douze	dooz
13	treize	trehz
14	quatorze	kah-TOHRZ
15	quinze	kaz
16	seize	sehz
17	dix-sept	dee-SEHT
18	dix-huit	dee-ZWEET
19	dix-neuf	dee-ZNUHF
20	vingt	va

Listen

You can hear this lesson being spoken.

Download MP3 soundtrack: fr_counts1_20.mp3 (1.23mb)
Click on the link to play the sound file (it takes a few minutes to download). Right click to download the file to save on your computer.

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Guide to Transliterations

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