French number dictation: write the number you hear

Why numbers are the hardest easy thing in French

You learned these in your first week, and you will still miss them in the exam. The reason is arithmetic. French has no separate word for seventy, eighty or ninety, so soixante-dix is sixty-ten, quatre-vingts is four-twenties, and quatre-vingt-dix is four-twenties-ten. You are not recognising a word; you are doing a sum while the speaker carries on talking.

The trap that costs the most marks is that quatre-vingt-dix (90) opens exactly like quatre-vingts (80). Everything that tells them apart arrives at the very end of the word, by which point most learners have already written 80 down. Same with soixante-quinze (75), which begins like soixante (60) and is nowhere near it.

Then the formats pile on. Et quart adds fifteen minutes but moins le quart subtracts them from the next hour, so dix-sept heures moins le quart is 16:45 — you hear seventeen and write sixteen. The first of the month is le premier, never le un. Years run in hundreds: mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-seize for 1996. And French reads phone numbers in two-digit chunks, so douze in a phone number is 12, not a one followed by a two.

How the drill marks you

Fairly, and only on the listening. Type the time however you like — 14:30, 14h30 and 1430 are all accepted, and so are 2,50, 2.50 and $2,50 for a price. Dates are day-first, the way they are written in French, so the fifteenth of March is 15/03 or 15-3. The format hint in the box tells you which shape is expected before you start typing.

What is not forgiven is a wrong number. 82 for 92, 65 for 75, 16 for 60 — those are marked wrong, because they are exactly the confusions the drill exists to find. A price without its decimal is wrong too: 250 means two hundred and fifty dollars, which is what happens in a shop when you mishear deux dollars cinquante.

Conversational times are converted, because converting them is the skill. Hearing huit heures moins dix and writing 07:50 is the thing an examiner is actually checking you can do.

How to practise this

Catch the shape before the value. In a long number, listen for how many pieces there are — quatre-vingt-dix-neuf is four pieces and quatre-vingts is one — and only then work out what they add up to. Learners who try to recognise the whole thing as a single word lose it every time.

Use Slow on anything you miss twice, then play it again at normal speed before moving on. Slow is a diagnostic, not the target: the exam plays audio once, at conversational rate.

The drill uses your device's own French voice, so nothing is downloaded and nothing is recorded. If your browser has no French voice, the drill hides itself and the table below is the whole page — every item written out in French, in digits, and with a Punjabi note.

Everything in the drill

49 items across 6 sets: Numbers (the 70/80/90 traps) (16), Times (8), Prices (7), Dates (6), Years (6), Phone numbers (6). Cover the second column and read down the first if you would rather study than play.

Last updated 2026-07-26. A number that keeps catching you out that is not here? Tell us — this list grows from what learners actually mishear.

Learn the numbers first

• Numbers, dates and telling the timeA1
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• Verb conjugation practiceGame