97 in French
quatre-vingt-dix-sept
Updated May 2026
Four-twenty-ten-seven. The textbook hard number.
NUMERAL
97
FRENCH
quatre-vingt-dix-sept
IPA
/katʁ.vɛ̃.dis.sɛt/
Breakdown
4 x 20 + 17 = 97 (4 x 20 + 10 + 7)
Regional variants
FR France
quatre-vingt-dix-sept
BE Belgium
nonante-sept
CH Switzerland
nonante-sept
Real sentence examples
“La page quatre-vingt-dix-sept du livre.”
“Il habite au quatre-vingt-dix-sept rue de la Republique.”
“Quatre-vingt-dix-sept pour cent des candidats ont reussi.”
Pronunciation and morphology notes
The classic "hardest French number" because the speaker computes 4 x 20 = 80, then adds 17, then breaks 17 into 10 + 7. In Belgian / Swiss-cantonal-Geneva French, "nonante-sept" is far simpler (90 + 7 directly).
Related numbers
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