Lesson 2. Avoir, age, and the numbers 70–99

To say what you have, how old you are, and that you're cold or hungry, you need one verb — avoir. Forms: j'ai, tu as, il a, elle a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont, elles ont. They're in the table. Before a vowel, je loses its e: you write “j'ai”, not “je ai”. In “nous avons”, “vous avez”, and “ils ont”, the final consonant links to the next word and sounds [z]. Age takes avoir, never être, and always the word ans: English says “I'm 30”, French says “I have 30 years”. You can't give an age without ans. States work the same way: French “has” hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sleepiness, fear. English says “I am cold”; French says “I have cold” — the second table shows all six. Set phrases for asking: “Quel âge as-tu ?” to a friend and “Vous avez quel âge ?” to an adult you don't know. Common mistakes: • NOT “Je suis trente ans.” — age doesn't take être. • NOT “Chloé a quatre-vingts.” — without ans the sentence isn't finished. • NOT “Je suis froid.” — in French you “have” cold. • NOT “je ai une photo” — before a vowel you need an apostrophe.

After 69, French counts its own way: 70 is 60 + 10 (soixante-dix), 71 is soixante et onze (60 + 11, not “soixante-dix-un”), 78 is soixante-dix-huit. 80 is 4 × 20: quatre-vingts. Then 81 is quatre-vingt-un, 85 quatre-vingt-cinq, 91 quatre-vingt-onze (80 + 11), 97 quatre-vingt-dix-sept. The letter s appears only on round quatre-vingts; if another number follows, it disappears: quatre-vingt-sept. Hundreds: cent, deux cents, trois cents — round hundreds have an -s, which drops before another number: deux cent un. The word mille never changes. Unlike English “one hundred”, “a thousand”, cent and mille take no un. Hyphens and spaces don't matter when your answer is checked: “quatre-vingt-quinze” and “quatre vingt quinze” both count. In Belgium and Switzerland, septante (70) and nonante (90) are used; people in France don't count this way, and we use the French of France.