Nineteen ninety-six
NONANTE, n. This is a variation on the (France) French way to say “ninety,” instead of quatre-vingt-dix (for those who have not studied French, that’s literally four-twenty-ten). It comes directly from Latin nonaginta. Nice and logical. It’s not even phonologically exciting: we fully expect that word-final a to become an e, and the g between vowels in the middle of the word is doomed from the start. If you were a linguistically inclined ancient Roman haruspex looking at bird entrails, trying to predict how people in Gaul might say “90” in a couple thousand years, nonante would be a solid bet.
So what happened?
The French counting system is the subject of jokes all over the anglophone internet (and, I assume, the internets of many other languages). Anyone who’s ever studied French as a foreign language has good reason to pause and say “Huh?” over the numbers. A brief overview of the weird parts, in screenshot form courtesy of this tumblr post:
Horrible pedantic French teacher correction: it is, in fact, four-twenties but four-twenty-one. You cannot tell this when you pronounce the French words because the final -s is silent, but that’s how you spell it—because this stuff wasn’t complicated enough already. Sorry for everything.
Anyway, from Brittany to Provence, people say quatre-vingt-dix for 90. This seemingly bizarre choice is the remnant of an ancient system that was vigesimal, or base-20, instead of base-10 like our modern English counting. In a base-20 system, 60 is a big deal (because it’s three twenties) but 70 isn’t—you’re only halfway to the next big-deal number, 80 (four twenties!). Same thing for 90. It’s a halfway point. You don’t need a whole new word for it, just like how in our base-10 system, 25, 35, 45, and so on don’t necessitate a new word. The important numbers, the ones that start a new pattern, are 20, 30, and 40. Tens! Because we count by 10.
The Gauls counted by 20. Gaulish or Gallic was a Celtic language, spoken in modern-day France before the Roman conquest, and ancient Celtic languages were vigesimal. Modern Celtic languages are mostly decimal, although a few retain a mixed decimal-vigesimal system, like French as it is spoken in France.
If you’re speaking or studying French, every time you say quatre-vingt-dix instead of nonante, you can think of Astérix and Obélix fighting back against Caesar’s conquest of Gaul.
Astérix and Obélix, ancient Gauls who fight the Romans, French comic book characters created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
Germanic languages were also vigesimal prior to the Romans, and you can still see traces of this in some of them, like Danish. In US English, our most famous example is Abraham Lincoln saying “four score and seven years ago” in the Gettysburg Address when he meant “eighty-seven years ago.” Base-20, baby.
French is fully decimal in some parts of the world, and in those places, 70 is septante, 80 is huitante or octante, and 90 is nonante.
I was reminded of this while interpreting at an interview between some Congolese refugees and some documentary filmmakers this week. The filmmakers want to make a movie about our local refugee community, and they were getting to know this family and asking some preliminary questions. One was “When did the problems in the [Democratic Republic of the] Congo start?”
My client gave a description of the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko by Laurent Kabila, which happened, he said, in “mille neuf cent nonante-six.” 1996.
Interpreting is the single most intellectually taxing thing I have ever done in my life. Bouncing back and forth between French and English while trying to remember and repeat paragraphs of speech at a time, often about subjects that I don’t know very much about—and because my volunteer work is with refugees, the subjects are often intense and emotional—it occupies my entire brain. It is the extreme-sport version of speaking a foreign language. With my one free brain cell during the interview, I was able to register, “Ooh, cool, he said nonante.” I had never heard anyone use it in conversation before.
Hours later, when the interview was over, I realized that my client had said nonante because the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a former colony of Belgium, infamously pillaged and exploited by King Leopold II in one of the worst atrocities in human history, a genocide which may have killed as many as ten million people. That’s why they speak Belgian French there.
Less cool, from that angle.
I could have this same realization about every conversation I interpret, of course. None of my clients would be speaking any kind of French to me if not for French and Belgian colonialism. But hearing nonante was such a moment of crystallization, especially in the middle of a conversation about when the problems in the DRC started. What happened in 1996 wouldn’t have happened if Leopold II hadn’t been there in 1885. The ongoing violence in the DRC today is the long-term result of European (and, later, American) murder and exploitation.
The language that brings me together with my interpreting clients is also a consequence of the long century of violence that forced them to flee their home. I am grateful to be able to speak to these people, to know them, to hear their stories, to help share their stories, and simultaneously sorry for all of it. Language is always inextricable from history, even when all you’re doing is counting. Quatre-vingt-dix in France is one last remnant of an ancient culture conquered by the Romans; quatre-vingt-dix in Canada is the mark of French colonialism. Nonante, in Switzerland and Belgium and Val d’Aoste, is a trace of the Roman conquest. Nonante in the Congo is trace of the Belgian one.
One last linguistic note: if you think counting in French is hard, you should check out Indo-Aryan languages. Four semesters of Hindi didn’t leave me with reliable counting skills, and many of the languages in the family are similarly difficult. Here’s an overview of how to count in Nepali, for example. There are patterns, but you essentially have to memorize 1 through 99. I know how to tell people how old I was when I studied Hindi (chaubiis, 24) but not how old I am now (32—I just checked and that’s batiis in Hindi).
On the other hand, if you’re feeling smug about how easy it is to count in English, please look to Turkish, which is perfectly transparent. By that I mean that the word for “eleven” is “ten one,” the word for “twelve” is “ten two,” and so on. It’s beautiful, and makes me reflect on how weird the words “eleven” and “twelve” are.
This week in Capital-R Romance, I did not make any progress in Les Mis—again. Life has been intense and busy lately, and I’ve only had a taste for lighter reading. Next week, maybe!
This week in small-r romance, I read The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics (f/f, historical) by Olivia Waite. This lovely, richly detailed novel has so many of my favorite things: queer women falling in love and getting a happy ending, French translation, travel, botany, art history, fashion and fiber arts, discussions of what constitutes art (versus craft/handicraft), and an opportunity to tell you all that as I read this passage
The countess worked calmly, though, as though the embroidery were something to escape into, rather than escape from. The muslin was stretched between the two wooden arcs of the hoop, the hook pierced the light fabric, and the slender silk thread was pulled through and formed into long chains of close-set stitches. Through all this, Lucy watched the countess surreptitiously from the corner of her eye.
…all I could think about was how once, in a Spanish literature class in college where we’d just read a Golden Age poem and the professor couldn’t get anyone to start the discussion, she rolled her eyes at us and said, “Sex, guys. Needle means sex.” Hell yeah it does.
(Also, it is so refreshing to find a novel that treats embroidery/needlework/fiber arts as something creative and fulfilling that women were allowed to enjoy, rather than as dull, sexist shorthand for patriarchal oppression. It’s not the embroidery itself that’s the problem, and I’m so tired of reading about how Heroine Who Isn’t Like Other Girls hates her needlework. Being like other girls is great, actually. You know what’s even better? Liking other girls.)
I also finished Take the Lead (m/f, contemporary) by Alexis Daria, which left me in awe. A romance novel is a finely tuned piece of machinery. The best ones draw the reader in immediately and then deliver emotional connection and conflict in perfectly calibrated doses, all timed so you can’t put it down, culminating in a happy ending. That’s common knowledge, and often the source of scornful adjectives like “formulaic.” Whatever. Get back to me when you can write a book this good.
(Weird how nobody ever describes a sonnet as a “formula.” Instead they use the much less judgmental word “form.”)
Being able to look under the hood and see how things operate impresses me more. This one is beautifully engineered, a sleek, shiny sports car of a book. I didn’t even mean to read it, let alone finish in a single day, but it hooked me right from the start and I had no choice. Take the Lead is about Gina, a professional dancer on a reality competition like Dancing with the Stars, and Stone, the star of another reality TV show about his family surviving in the Alaskan wilderness. Stone goes on Gina’s show to learn to dance so he can win money to pay for his mom’s hip replacement. Stone and Gina have chemistry immediately, but she doesn’t want her professional reputation damaged by rumors about her sex life, especially since she’s worried about confirming a “sexy Latina” stereotype. Stone, meanwhile, can’t get involved with anyone because he’s keeping secrets. What’s more than that, he’s set on living in Alaska and she wants to split her time between LA and NYC. The conflict is clear, but not simple. Wondering how they would resolve it had me racing to the end.
The third romance novel I read this week was Spellbound (m/m, fantasy, historical) by Allie Therin, which takes place in a version of 1920s New York City with magic and is totally charming. It really indulges in its setting—several scenes make use of a speakeasy, and one happens at a skyscraper under construction—which I love. The characters are sweet and likable and I finished this book so quickly that a few hours after I was done, I found myself wishing I was still in the middle of it so I could feel absorbed again.
Being absorbed in a book is the purest of pleasures, and when I come home after interpreting at an interview that’s about burned villages and mass graves, it is what I most want. Any book that can make me happy after a glimpse of how ugly the world can be is a good one.
