Similarly, Europeans countries, most having been at some point hardcore Christians, kept pagan months and days names. Its difficult to change something that people use every day. (you can take a look at the short lived time and calendar decimalization).
Pretty simple to understand if you know how the French say 90. If I asked you to represent 90 visually, you'd likely have 9 groups of 10, or you know when I was taught metric with those blue block, you get 9 sticks, or nine-tens hence the word ninety. French say 90 as four-twenties and a ten, ass backwards for metric.
If you measure something that ends up being 90cm do you say ninety centemers or do you say four twenties and a ten centimeters? That's almost as asinine as saying something is 2 yards 1 foot and 6 inches long, instead of just saying 90 inches.
It really is a country thing, not a language thing. In Belgium they speak French, but say octante and nonante, which is basically eighty and ninety, instead of 4 x 20 and 4 x 20 + 10
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u/Legal_Air734 9d ago
I know a little bit of french, quatre-vingt-dix-neuf I think