German exceptions are nothing compared to French exceptions. French is basically all exceptions and no rules! And some math (in French when you want to say 99, you literally say four twentieths and 10 and 9).
People make a big deal about "quatre-vingt", but no French speaker thinks about that word as anything except "80". No one is doing multiplication in real time.
The context is people learning the language though... this sort of efficiency will always come with familiarity, like how you can read 21:00 as 9 without thinking about it
> like how you can read 21:00 as 9 without thinking about it
Well... in French you can totally say twenty-nine instead of just nine (although nine also works). I think that is pretty rare among languages but I'm not sure.
