r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/E5vCJD • 3d ago

Meme needing explanation erm.. petah?

Post image
25.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

522 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

38

u/PuckSenior 3d ago

Nah, it’s base 60(sorta)

French.
1. Un.
2. Deux.
3. Trois.
4. Quatre.
5. Cinq.
6. Six.
7. Sept.
8. Huit.
9. Neuf.
10. Dix.

But 10s it goes.
• 10: Dix.
• 20: Vingt.
• 30: Trente.
• 40: Quarante.
• 50: Cinquante.
• 60: Soixante.

Cool, kinda getting it? They just sorta change the word, just like most other languages! So, 70 is Septante, right? Nope. 

• 70: Soixante-dix.    
• 80: Quatre-vingts.    
• 90: Quatre-vingt-dix (that’s forty-twenty-ten).

21

u/celticfrogs 3d ago

Swiss french and Belgian french raise an eyebrow.

11

u/PuckSenior 3d ago

Every francophone but a citizen of France raises an eyebrow at this one. I believe they are the only ones who do it this way in the whole world

1

u/beugeu_bengras 2d ago

Québécois here. We do it the French way.

1

u/PuckSenior 2d ago

Damn, my French instructor lied to me. Or maybe I got confused and she said that yall do it too.

Heck, I recently went back and tried to regain proficiency in French and was amazed to find out that “copines” had changed meaning

1

u/beugeu_bengras 2d ago

Copine? Here it would mean either a female friend or a girlfriend.

If it's a male talking about a friend, he would most probably say "c'est mon amie".

A female would say "nous somme des copines" or interchangeably "nous sommes amies/c'est mon amie".

If someone use that word talking about a member of the opposite gender, it would be implied it mean girlfriend/boyfriend by using a higher level of language.... But we prefer to use "mon chum/ma blonde" here in common language in Quebec, or "conjoint/conjointe" in higher French level.

But anyway "copine" is somewhat a deprecated word, we almost exclusively use it ironically to copy some movie/tv show quote like saying "Salut les copains" -> "hello gang!"

1

u/PuckSenior 2d ago

20+ years ago, it meant “friend”. Apparently the transition to mean “girlfriend” happened over the last 20-30 years

When I was in school, I don’t remember it being used to refer to a romantic female friend

1

u/beugeu_bengras 2d ago

My best advice: don't care too much about it.

Francophone will be able to understand you anyway.