Percentages and fractions show up in everything from a recipe (un quart de farine) to a news headline (64 % des Français) to a casual sip of wine (encore une demi-bouteille). French handles them with a handful of nouns and one adjective (demi) that has the unusual property of agreeing in some positions and refusing to agree in others. This page covers how to read percentages and fractions out loud, how to attach them to nouns, the agreement rules that follow, and the small differences in register between un demi, la moitié, and à moitié.
Percentages: pour cent and the space rule
The percent sign % is read pour cent — two words, with a space in French typography. The reading is fixed: it is never par cent, never percent as one word.
- 50 % → cinquante pour cent
- 2,7 % → deux virgule sept pour cent
- 100 % → cent pour cent
Le chômage est tombé à 7,2 % cette année.
Unemployment fell to 7.2% this year.
Soixante-quatre pour cent des Français préfèrent le café au thé.
Sixty-four percent of French people prefer coffee to tea.
Linking a percentage to a noun: % de / des
The preposition that links a percentage to the noun being measured is de — bare de for generic nouns, contracted du / de la / des when the noun is definite.
Trente pour cent de la population vit en ville.
Thirty percent of the population lives in cities. (la population — definite, so de + la → de la)
Plus de cinquante pour cent des étudiants travaillent à temps partiel.
More than fifty percent of students work part-time. (les étudiants — definite plural, so de + les → des)
Vingt pour cent d'eau et quatre-vingts pour cent de sang.
Twenty percent water and eighty percent blood. (generic, mass nouns — bare de, elided to d' before vowel)
The contracted forms du, de la, des appear because the noun is part of a definite set (the students, the population). For an indefinite, generic, or mass reading, bare de is correct: 20 % d'augmentation, 5 % de matière grasse.
Verb agreement after a percentage
This is the trickier piece. When a percentage is the subject of a sentence, the verb agrees with the noun in the de complement, not with the percentage itself. The percentage is grammatically the "quantifier"; the noun it quantifies is the real subject for agreement purposes.
Trente pour cent de la classe est absent aujourd'hui.
Thirty percent of the class is absent today. (la classe — singular, so 'est absent')
Trente pour cent des élèves sont absents aujourd'hui.
Thirty percent of the students are absent today. (les élèves — plural, so 'sont absents')
Cinquante pour cent des Français pensent que le climat se dégrade.
Fifty percent of French people think the climate is getting worse.
There is a competing analysis (preferred by some prescriptive grammars) in which the verb agrees with the percentage itself — singular for un pour cent, plural for everything else. In practice modern usage agrees with the de-noun, and that is what you should follow. See complex/agreement-fractions-percentages for the full debate.
Fractions: the core set
French expresses fractions with a small inventory of nouns. The numerator is a cardinal number (or un), and the denominator is a special fraction word.
| Fraction | French | Plural form |
|---|---|---|
| 1/2 | un demi / la moitié | — |
| 1/3 | un tiers | deux tiers, trois tiers |
| 1/4 | un quart | deux quarts, trois quarts |
| 1/5 | un cinquième | deux cinquièmes |
| 1/6 | un sixième | deux sixièmes |
| 1/10 | un dixième | deux dixièmes |
| 1/100 | un centième | deux centièmes |
| 3/4 | trois quarts | — |
| 2/3 | deux tiers | — |
The first three (demi, tiers, quart) are irregular fraction nouns inherited directly from Latin. Everything from one-fifth onward is built regularly: take the ordinal number (cinquième, sixième, septième…) and use it as a noun. They take an -s in the plural like any noun.
Il a mangé un tiers du gâteau et m'a laissé les deux tiers.
He ate a third of the cake and left me two thirds.
Le verre est rempli aux trois quarts.
The glass is three-quarters full.
Un dixième de la planète vit sous le seuil de pauvreté.
A tenth of the planet lives below the poverty line.
Linking a fraction to a noun
The same de rule as for percentages: bare de for generic, contracted forms for definite.
Un tiers de la population a déjà voté.
A third of the population has already voted.
Trois quarts des élèves ont réussi l'examen.
Three quarters of the students passed the exam.
Donne-moi un quart de la pizza, ça suffit.
Give me a quarter of the pizza, that's enough.
Demi — the adjective with two lives
Demi is the most complicated of the fraction words because it behaves as an adjective in some constructions and as a noun in others, and its agreement rules change depending on its position.
Demi before the noun: invariable, hyphenated
When demi comes before the noun, it is invariable (no gender or number agreement) and connected to the noun by a hyphen:
Elle est partie il y a une demi-heure.
She left half an hour ago. (demi invariable before heure, hyphen)
Je vais boire une demi-bouteille.
I'm going to drink half a bottle.
Une demi-douzaine d'œufs, s'il vous plaît.
Half a dozen eggs, please.
Il a fait deux demi-tours avant de trouver la sortie.
He did two U-turns before finding the exit. (demi invariable; the noun tour takes the -s)
Notice that demi itself never gets an -s here, even when the noun is plural (deux demi-bouteilles, trois demi-litres). It is locked in its masculine singular form when prefixed.
Demi(e) after the noun: agrees in gender (not number)
When demi follows a noun, connected by et, it agrees with that noun in gender only. It still never takes a plural -s.
Il est midi et demi.
It is half past noon. (midi is masculine — demi)
Il est trois heures et demie.
It is half past three. (heures is feminine — demie)
J'ai attendu deux heures et demie.
I waited two and a half hours. (heures fem. plural — demie agrees in gender only, no -s)
Il pèse trois kilos et demi.
It weighs three and a half kilos. (kilos masc. — demi)
The reason demi stays singular even after a plural noun is that, mathematically, you're only adding one half — the noun count is plural, but the fraction is singular. The agreement is with the gender of the unit, not its count.
The two demi rules form a clean split:
- Before the noun: demi-
- noun, invariable, hyphenated. une demi-heure, deux demi-bouteilles.
- After the noun: noun + et demi(e), agrees in gender only. une heure et demie, deux heures et demie. Once you learn that the pre-nominal form is frozen and the post-nominal form takes only the gender of its head noun, the system is consistent.
Un demi as a standalone noun
Un demi by itself is also a masculine noun meaning a half-pint glass of beer — a cultural fixture in any French café.
On prend deux demis et un café, s'il vous plaît.
Two beers and a coffee, please. (here demis takes -s as a regular noun)
When demi stands alone as a noun, it acts like any other noun and pluralises normally — this is the one situation where you write demis.
La moitié vs un demi
Both mean one half, but they aren't interchangeable.
- La moitié is a noun. It refers to the half of a specific thing. La moitié du gâteau = half of the cake.
- Un demi as a fraction adjective refers to half a (unit). Un demi-gâteau = half a cake (a different, indefinite cake).
- La moitié de = half of something already defined; un demi- = half a something, used as a measurement.
J'ai mangé la moitié du gâteau.
I ate half of the cake. (a specific cake, half of it)
J'ai mangé un demi-gâteau.
I ate half a cake. (a cake-half-sized portion, no specific cake)
La moitié des invités sont déjà partis.
Half of the guests have already left.
The adverb à moitié
There is also an adverbial à moitié meaning halfway, partially. It modifies verbs and adjectives.
La bouteille est à moitié vide.
The bottle is half empty.
Il dormait à moitié pendant le film.
He was half asleep during the film.
J'ai fait le travail à moitié — il faudra y revenir.
I did the job halfway — we'll have to come back to it.
The phrase aux trois quarts functions the same way, as an adverbial phrase meaning three-quarters of the way:
Le projet est terminé aux trois quarts.
The project is three-quarters finished.
Le verre est plein aux trois quarts.
The glass is three-quarters full.
Mixed numbers
A whole number plus a fraction connects via et:
Deux et demi (2,5) — deux entiers et un demi.
Two and a half (2.5) — two wholes and a half.
Trois et un tiers (3 ⅓) — la recette demande trois tasses et un tiers.
Three and a third (3⅓) — the recipe calls for three and a third cups.
Cette planche fait un mètre et demi de long.
This board is a meter and a half long.
The mixed-number construction with et is identical to time-telling: trois heures et demie is structurally three (units of time) and a half.
Reading fractions in mathematics
In a maths classroom, the fraction 3/4 is read either as trois quarts (same as the everyday form) or, more formally, as trois sur quatre. The sur form is what teachers use when writing fractions on the board, especially for non-standard denominators.
Sept sur douze (7/12) ne se simplifie pas.
Seven over twelve (7/12) doesn't simplify.
La probabilité est de un sur six.
The probability is one in six.
For percentages in formal mathematical contexts you can also see sur cent instead of pour cent, especially in older textbooks — but in modern usage pour cent is universal outside of sur cent élèves type phrasings.
Common Mistakes
❌ 50% des Français
Incorrect typography — French puts a space before the % sign.
✅ 50 % des Français
50% of French people
❌ J'ai attendu deux heures et demies.
Incorrect — demi(e) never takes a plural -s, even after a plural noun. It agrees in gender only.
✅ J'ai attendu deux heures et demie.
I waited two and a half hours.
❌ Une demie-heure
Incorrect — pre-nominal demi is invariable; it stays masculine singular regardless of the noun. The -e ending here is wrong.
✅ Une demi-heure
A half hour
❌ Soixante pour cent du Français préfèrent le café.
Incorrect — du is the contraction de + le. Here we mean les Français (plural), so it should be des.
✅ Soixante pour cent des Français préfèrent le café.
Sixty percent of French people prefer coffee.
❌ J'ai mangé une demi de gâteau.
Incorrect — demi is not used as a standalone fraction with de. Use la moitié for half of a specific thing, or un demi-gâteau as a measurement.
✅ J'ai mangé la moitié du gâteau.
I ate half of the cake.
❌ Deux tier de la population
Incorrect spelling — the plural takes -s, and tiers always ends in -s (even singular: un tiers).
✅ Deux tiers de la population
Two-thirds of the population
Key takeaways
Percentages take pour cent with a space before the % symbol, and they link to nouns with de / du / de la / des depending on whether the noun is generic or definite. Fractions use a small set of irregular nouns (demi, tiers, quart) plus regular ordinal-based forms (cinquième, dixième, centième). The trickiest member of the set is demi: invariable and hyphenated before a noun (une demi-heure), gender-agreeing but never plural after a noun (deux heures et demie), and replaceable by la moitié when you mean half of a specific thing. Get those three patterns right and fractions will stop being a source of error.
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Start learning French→Related Topics
- Les Nombres CardinauxA1 — French cardinal numbers from zero to a billion: the regular 1-69, the vigesimal 70-99, the agreement rules on cent and vingt, the noun-like behavior of million and milliard, and the hyphenation rules under both traditional and reformed spelling.
- Les Nombres OrdinauxA2 — French ordinal numbers: premier/première (the only gender-marked ordinal), the -ième suffix and its spelling tweaks (cinquième with u, neuvième with v), deuxième vs second, the abbreviations 1er/1re/2e, and where French uses cardinals where English uses ordinals.
- La Virgule DécimaleA2 — Why French writes 3,14 where English writes 3.14 — the decimal comma, the thousands separator (a space, not a comma), how to read decimals out loud, and the small typographic differences that quietly cause large misunderstandings on invoices, recipes, and spreadsheets.
- Agreement with Fractions and Percentages: 50% des étudiants ont réussiB2 — When the subject is a fraction or percentage modifying a noun (50% des étudiants, la moitié des oranges, un tiers du gâteau), French agreement follows the second noun — the thing being measured. Mass-noun complements trigger singular; count-noun complements trigger plural. A handful of edge cases (sums of money, on, chacun) override the default.
- Adverbes de QuantitéA2 — The French adverbs that measure amount and degree — beaucoup, peu, assez, trop, plus, moins, autant, très, bien, vraiment, tellement — and the obligatory de that links them to a noun. Plus the crucial très/beaucoup split that English speakers get wrong almost every time.