I once asked if 80 is used as a weed number in france to my french teacher and he was offended by my question
I've never once heard other french people say 80 for weed, so it's not common but... surely there are people who say it, right?
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in reply to @bruno's post:
For those coming to the comments looking for an explanation:
French throws a hissy-fit for numbers above 69 (nice). Instead of, say, septante, 70 is soixante-dix, or "sixty-ten." Then, for 80, they lose a bit more sanity and simply use quatre-vignt, or "four-twenty." 99 is four-twenty-ten-nine, by the way, before sense reasserts itself with cent, "hundred."
(there is a historical basis for this; 60 used to be three-twenties and so on, like how Abe Lincoln said "87" in his speech as "four score and seven." Why quatre-vignt is still left over while the others have more consistent versions, I have no clue)
Small addition!
There are other versions of 70/80/90! They're septante, huitante (sometimes octante, though that one's possibly archaic?), and nonante! They're primarily used in Switzerland and Belgium, although there's some places in France that use them, usually because they're nearby.
As far as I'm aware, we don't really know why French stopped using the vigesimal system but left it in place for any number after 69, though. My best guess is that it was likely that some people just. were used to using vigesimal and didn't want to change, and there wasn't enough of a reason to count beyond 69ish, so it just kinda stuck around and the Académie Française just said "eh whatever sure, we make the rules here". That's just what I think, at least x3
in reply to @Scampir's post:
18 is said dix-huit but, for some reason, 80 is said quatre-vingt, so literally four-twenty
I think the joke is that this person Bruno is pretending to roleplay as thinks "dix huit" is 80 because they're ignorant, and they're making a weed joke because of phoneme similarity?
Oh wait, it's riffing on 420 and four twenties. Lol maybe I'm the ignorant one
