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French is characterized by major differences between phonology and orthography. Consequently, learning the deep orthography of written French is a challenge to both first (L1) and second (L2) language learners. This empirical study focuses on the production of silent number morphology in written French and illustrates that a group of L2 learners, exposed to limited amounts of spoken French in a typical L2 classroom in Sweden, outperform both L1 children and L2 children learning French through immersion. The aim of the study is to discuss the impact of learning context, age of onset and complexity of written number agreement on the learning of the deep orthography of French as a second language.