This was cleaned up in the Belgian variant of French: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_French.

- 70 = septante (versus soixante-dix, which is 60-10)

- 80 = huitante (versus quatre-vingt, which is 40-20), *EDIT*: wrong, see below.

- 90 = nonante (versus quatre-vingt-dix, which is 40-20-10)

The article also mentions something interesting I didn't know:

> The use of septante for "seventy" and nonante for "ninety", in contrast to Standard French soixante-dix (literally "sixty-ten") and quatre-vingt-dix'("four-twenty-ten"). Those former words occur also in Swiss French. Unlike the Swiss, however, Belgians never use huitante for quatre-vingts ("four twenties"), with the use of octante in the local Brussels dialect as being the only exception. Although they are considered Belgian and Swiss words, septante and nonante were common in France until around the 16th century, when the newer forms began to dominate.[4]

*EDIT*: This doesn't appear to be true, Belgian French speakers also say quatre-vingt for 80.

It’s the Swiss who fixed it and say huitante. The Belgians say quatre-vingt like the French.

> Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting because you mixed gender of a noun) or often just give up.

I’m French and, at least in my circle, I’ve never seen a native French « humiliating » a non-native trying to speak French.

And to me there is two reasons : - we know our language is difficult to learn - we are really bad when it comes to speak any foreign language

As*oles are totally a thing (especially in the banking/financial sector) but most French people are admirative of anyone who speaks more than one language. Because most of us can’t.

Got off a train from Brussels at Gare du Nord and asked at the kiosk for “une cafe sil-vous-plait”, guy behind the counter responded in English

I don’t bother now. Germany, Italy, Greece, sure, but not France.

Brussels is increasingly English-speaking in general, and folks who work in the train areas in particular have to be fully fluent in French, Dutch and English, where the latter is just the default communication choice if you detect someone is not a native Dutch/French speaker. As well the area around the Noordstation is particularly unwise for a tourist to visit for cafés, so it is extra important for them to get across where you ought to go.

An amusing version of this happened to me in Porto recently at a bookshop. Many moons ago I was fluent in Brazilian Portuguese, but today that's retained mostly in reading, I can't speak well nor can I easily follow European Portuguese speakers. I was browsing the Portuguese literature section when the shop keeper asked me question (which I didn't catch), and then upon ascertaining I spoke English she rather forcefully explained where the English section was, but very confusedly watched as I politely kept where I was. To make matters probably more confusing I ended up buying a linguistically avant-garde book that I soon learned really is best suited for native speakers (Guimarães Rosa, the author, is basically a Brazilian James Joyce)

Maybe it's a cultural difference but I have a hard time thinking that this is impolite. I'd have do the same and it wouldn't mean that your french is not perfect but only that I would like to ease your life.

Most likely he responded in English because he felt it would be easier for both of you, not because he wanted to humiliate you.

On the receiving side it comes off as "just stop trying and buy something"

Which is really quite reasonable if you are at the front of a queue of people waiting to buy something, or if the cashier has something else to do like make coffee for the people who already ordered. The intent is very unlikely to be to humiliate the foreigner.

My guess is that you didn't say "bonjour" first. Major faux pas.

I'm an American living in Japan and the this happens quite a lot - even among friends who I'm pretty sure mean no harm.

It seems like a lot of people have this very strong "foreigner = English" mapping in their head. As soon as you're outed as "foreigner" for any reason, you get the English (even if you're proficient in the local language).

I definitely think it's disrespectful to switch languages on someone like that, but a lot of people just don't seem to think about it. Multi-lingual conversation manners are not commonly talked about!

You might be having difficulties speaking/understanding the language with actual French people not because it's difficult/random (and it is, I believe that most teenagers can't write a full page of faultless French !) but because spoken and written French are quite different : contractions ( j'sais pas instead of je ne sais pas), using 'on' instead of 'nous', the simple past is never used, slang, etc. Since foreigners tend to learn written French, things get difficult quite quickly when in the field. Obviously, you're not allowed to write spoken French.

Interestingly enough, if you listen to people talking in the 50s (old films, radio, etc) , they speak something which is a lot closer to written French. I'm under the impression that there's a growing gap between spoken and written French, and the French académie is not helping by essentially preventing the written language from evolving.

As to cleaning it up, well, lots of people agree with you, but always end up facing extremely strong opponents who accuse them of destroying the very nature of French culture!

I don't think "cleaning up" a language talked by so many people in the world is reasonable because some people have trouble learning it.

> Either they suck it up, face often humiliation from native speakers from their mistakes (its quite something to see senior banking colleagues laughing like little kids and pointing finger at you on a project meeting because you mixed gender of a noun).

I'm not sure if it's a language problem or a people problem. I often encounter people that mix the gender of nouns, and I don't really care about it. It's a lot to learn and not very important. Just like some people don't have a great accent, that's how it is, it doesn't stop people from communicating. Same for the people that I know, unless we're asked we wouldn't bother correcting someone that "le table" is actually "la table" because tables are female.

On my side, I find the pronunciation of English to be very hard to learn and to master, and am scared of sounding stupid whenever I talk English, so I avoid it, and end up not being good at it, so I can understand the sentiment.

If it’s any consolation, I find English pronunciation very difficult, and I’m a native speaker. It surprises me that in my thirties I still regularly encounter situations where I want to use a word and realise I’ve never heard it spoken before, so have no idea if the pronunciation I use in my head when reading it is correct.

I also often hear others mispronounce words; friends, colleagues, even on TV.

I guess my point is that if you’re mispronouncing English words you’re speaking it like a native!

The Swiss French speakers found a way around that: nonante. Ninety, the Swiss way, not bothered by the French Academy.