Vive la France !

Meaning of vive la France

Vive la France !
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The expression vive la France comes to life every so often, especially around 14 July and during the World Cup. Get le scoop on what it actually means as well as how it’s spelled and pronounced with this detailed analysis.

Vive la France at a glance

Translation Long live France!
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Pronunciation French sound files [veev la fra(n)s]
IPA   [viv la frɑ̃s]

Meaning and usage

You probably won’t hear the patriotic exclamation Vive la France ! more than a few times a year; it tends to be reserved for occasions like Bastille Day, French elections, international sports, and, sadly, national tragedy.

Vive la France simply means "long live France" and is a way to celebrate being French and express pride in French accomplishments. It’s similar to exclamations like “God bless America” and “God save the Queen,” other than the obvious lack of religious reference in the French expression. It’s almost always preceded by Vive la République ! and is sometimes accompanied by other rousing expressions.

 Common spelling mistake: "viva" la France

Non-native French speakers often write viva la France, probably due to the influence of the term Viva Las Vegas and/or due to the fact that the -e at the end of vive is sometimes pronounced. However, viva is not a French word: it’s Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese. Even so, viva la France does not mean “long live France” in any of those languages; that would be viva Francia, viva la Francia, and viva França, respectively.

 Grammar note

Vive is the third person singular subjunctive of the verb vivre (to live). It was originally used as a third person imperative in this type of expression, but most grammarians now consider it an invariable presentative.*

Similar Expressions

Vive is also used with other cherished things or people, such as

  • vive l’amour – hurray for love
  • vive les Bleus* – hurray for the French soccer / football team
  • vive la différence – long live the difference (typically between men and women)
  • vive les mariés* – long live the bride and groom
  • vive la reine / le roi – long live the queen / king
  • vive les vacances* – hurray for vacation / the holidays

* Think these should be plural, as in vivent les Bleus, vivent les mariés, vivent les vacances? According to Le Bon Usage, vive is invariable in this type of construction. Some native French speakers disagree, and conjugate it as vive or vivent according to the number of the noun it precedes.

You’re likely to encounter other expressions in movies and ads: vive les femmes (hurray for women), vive les produits pays (hurray for local products), Vive le vent (“long live the wind” – a French Christmas carol), etc. Sometimes they even make it into the news:

  • vive le Lance – long live Lance [Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France (stripped of titles in 2012)]
  • vive le Tour, forever – long live the Tour, forever (Lance Armstrong, in his farewell speech)
  • vive le Québec libre – long live free Quebec (General Charles de Gaulle, during a controversial speech in Montreal in 1967)
  • vive les racailles – long live scumbags (one of the responses to then-Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy’s comment just before les émeutes des banlieues de 2005)

 Related features

Patriotic French expressions

More French patriotism

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Vive la France !

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