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L'entreprise a soixante-dix clients.

L'entreprise a soixante-dix clients.
The company has 70 clients.
From Lesson 29:Numbers 21 to 100·French

Questions & Answers about L'entreprise a soixante-dix clients.

Why does the French word for 70 look like 'sixty-ten'?
In French, counting changes a bit after 69. Numbers from 70 to 79 are built by adding to 60 (soixante). So, 70 is literally sixty-ten (soixante-dix), 71 is sixty-eleven (soixante et onze), 72 is sixty-twelve (soixante-douze), and so on.
Why is there a hyphen in soixante-dix?
In French, when you combine words to make a compound number less than 100, you must connect them with a hyphen. The only exception is when they are joined by the word et (and), like in 21 or 71.
Why is it l'entreprise instead of la entreprise?
Entreprise is a feminine noun, so the word for 'the' would normally be la. However, because entreprise starts with a vowel, the 'a' in la is dropped and replaced with an apostrophe. This makes the two words flow together easily.
I've seen à with an accent mark before. Why doesn't a have one here?
They are completely different words! Without the accent, a is the 'he/she/it' form of the verb avoir (to have). With the accent, à means 'at', 'to', or 'in'. Since the company 'has' 70 clients, we need the verb a.
Do I pronounce the 's' at the end of clients?
No, the 's' at the end of plural nouns like clients is almost always silent in French. It is only there to show you in writing that there is more than one client.

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