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Get ready to find out all the things you have to know about the inspirational French sentence "C'est la vie". More precisely, it includes a full explanation of what it is and how to use it in everyday life with an audio example. Together with the useful informations we sprinkled like synonym, dialogue example, slow pronunciation audio and more!
Translation : That's life
Register : Neutral - Inspirational
Slow
Normal
IPA : / sɛ la vi /
"C'est la vie" is a fatalistic French phrase that means "That's life" or "That's how it is". It shows acceptance or resignation to a less-than-ideal situation.
It can be used in two ways...
First, you can use it fatalistically when you can't do anything about an unpleasant situation or bad news:
But French people also use it about something necessary for life or a way of life:
"C'est la vie" is widely used in other languages, including English.
And surprisingly, it's much more used in English than in French. Probably because we prefer to use "C'est comme ça" (That's how it is).
↓ Example in a story with slow French audio ↓
Finally, let's see an example in a parallel story with slow audio.
Monsieur le professeur
Mr professor
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