Welcome back yet again to our French word of the week blog. Today’s word is the verb vivre.
To hear how to pronounce it, listen to the audio clip below:
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Do you feel like you recognise it? You might know a certain English expression that we’ve borrowed from French, joie de vivre. This expression describes ‘living life to the full’ or ‘truly enjoying life’. There’s a certain term within this that relates to the translation of the verb – ‘life’. The verb vivre means to live in English.
Now it’s time to get stuck into some examples:
Nous vivions à la campagne depuis quinze ans. We’ve been living in the countryside for fifteen years.
J’aimerais bien vivre en Italie, mais je ne parle pas italien. I would really like to live in Italy, but I don’t speak Italian.
Notre grand-mère a vécu des années très difficiles pendant la guerre. Our grandmother lived through some really tough years during the war.
Leur logement n’est pas trop cher parce qu’elles vivent en couple. Their accommodation isn’t that expensive because they are living together as a couple.
vivre à fond to live [life] to the full; to make the most of it
vivre pour quelque chose to live for something; to live and breathe something
Mon prof d’anglais ne vit que pour la littérature. My English teacher simply lives and breathes literature.
Vive la révolution ! Long live the revolution!
L’espoir fait vivre. We live in hope; Hope keeps you going.
While there is indeed a pattern for following the conjugation of regular -re verbs in French, unfortunately you might have noticed from the examples above that vivre does not fit into this category. As an irregular -re verb, you’ll just need to learn it and get used to how it works. To get started, check out our conjugation table for vivre.
In some instances, you might come across the present participle of vivre, which is vivant. Again, you might have heard this in the borrowed expression bon vivant, which describes someone living the good life (with lots of parties and luxury!).
We can use vivant(e) as an adjective to mean alive, living or lively:
Tu aimerais beaucoup ce quartier, il est très vivant. You would really like this neighbourhood, it’s so lively.
Elle a quatre-vingt-dix-neuf ans, mais elle est bien vivante. She’s ninety-nine years old, but she’s still alive and well.
Ce petit lézard ne bouge jamais. Je n’aurais pas cru qu’il était vivant ! This little lizard never moves. I wouldn’t have believed that it was alive!
Congratulations on adding yet another new word and translation to your vocabulary. Whether you’re a casual learner, or you’re really living for learning French, we hope you find our blogs helpful!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
