"Ian Jackson" wrote in message
...

French falls foul of ambiguity because of its quatre-vignts notation for
80: quatre vignts dix could be any of:

quatre-vignts-dix-huit (98)
quatre-vignts dix-huit (80 18)

A pause makes all the difference. I imagine that French speakers make a
very exaggerated pause in the second case to avoid ambiguity, whereas
almost no pause is needed between non-ambiguous pairs such as vignt-huit
trente-quatre (28 34).

To add to the confusion, two of the letters in your French '20' are also
consistently reversed!

Apologies. At least I was consistent... ly wrong ;-)

Vingt. Vingt. Vingt. I'll write 100 lines before bedtime ;-)


Part of the problem is that I've looked at the spelling of both so many
times now that mine actually looks "right" and the other looks "wrong". I
have a sneaking suspicion that I may have been mis-spelling it for a
loooooong time - maybe I got it wrong at school and it was never picked up,
and the habit has stuck.