# Swedish: Long Live Sweden!



## mateo19

Hello all,

My best friend is going to study in Sweden starting next week and last night we took a picture of ourselves with a bottle of Swedish vodka.
I wanted to caption the picture "Long Live Sweden", just as we would say in Spanish "¡Viva Suecia!".
How may I say this in Swedish?  Thank you very much!


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## Arrius

Don't you mean "Long live Sweden!", and whatever happened to akkavit?
I think it's "Leva Sverige!" If it isn't, some kind Scandinavian will soon correct me.


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## mabubus

Länge leve Sverige!


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## mateo19

Ooops!!!
Yes, it is "Long Live Sweden".  I was having trouble reading my computer screen when I typed that.
Could an administrater please fix that horrible typo of mine?
Thank you and sorry!


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## Wilma_Sweden

Arrius said:


> whatever happened to akkavit?


Akvavit is the spelling, just FIY. I am assuming the Swedish vodka they're toasting with is Absolut, and even though it's now owned by French Pernod, it is still Made in Sweden.  I'm still waiting for 'Absolut Absinthe' to be launched... 



mateo19 said:


> "¡Viva Suecia!".
> How may I say this in Swedish?  Thank you very much!


Arrius is partly right, Lev*e* Sverige! is a perfectly idiomatic phrase in Swedish for a toast or general exclamation meaning Hooray or similar. You don't need the Länge unless you explicitly wish someone a long life. As far as I'm aware there is no "long" included in the original Spanish phrase, ¡Viva!, while in English, for some reason, it's unidiomatic to just say Live England/the Queen/whatever, at least I've never heard anything other than "Long live..." in this context. The mood of the verb in all three languages is the subjunctive.

I hope this clears up rather than making it even more confusing... 

/Wilma


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## Arrius

The original phrase was Latin not Spanish, in which _Vivat (Caesar)!_ without any word for _long _was used, (and _Vivant omnes virgines faciles formosae _from the Carmina Burana)_._ Spanish _viva_ has no addition either, and you are right that it is always,_ *Long* live the Queen! Wales (_rarely_ England) forever_, as a translation of _Cymru am Byth,_ is used and _not long live_ as you rightly say, and in German "_*Es lebe* der Kaiser, das Bier und der Puff_!" is a frequent jocular toast without any word for long, at least with the subjunctive verb, even though there is no longer a Kaiser.


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## Wilma_Sweden

Arrius said:


> The original phrase was Latin not Spanish


You misunderstood me, I meant the original phrase as posted by mateo, i.e. Viva Suecia which, even if originating from Latin, is still written in Spanish. I simply thought it was curious about the insertion of long in English, and now I'm wondering how the Norwegians and the Danes would say it!

/Wilma


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## mateo19

Hello Wilma,

It is very interesting what you said and I appreciated your comment.  In English we have to say "long" as "Live + name" by itself doesn't mean anything.  I think that English acquired the expression "long live!" from French.  In French there are two ways to say this expression:

1) Vive la France!  (Long live France!)
2) Longue vie au roi!  (Long live the king! Literally "long life to the king!")

I too am interested in seeing this expression from other languages, although we may have to open another thread.  Cheers!


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## Sepia

mateo19 said:


> Hello Wilma,
> 
> It is very interesting what you said and I appreciated your comment. In English we have to say "long" as "Live + name" by itself doesn't mean anything. ... quote]
> 
> Sure it does not mean anything in English. Why? Nobody would recognize it as a subjunctive, such as you can with
> 
> Viva Mexico
> and
> 
> Vive la France.
> 
> "Leve" in "Leve Sverige" - which could just as well be Danish by the way - is at least recognizable as NOT being indicative and also not being an imperative. Seems to me as being the last remainders of a subjunctive in those two languages just like in Spanish and French. Of course modern street-Latin and Germanic languages do not have to identical on this point, but what speaks for the option that they are or at least were is high German with "Es lebe Sverige" - here it is a subjunctive too.


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## Vikingo

Hi all,

in Norwegian we say both "Leve Norge!" and "Lenge leve Norge!". I think the first one is a bit more common.

By the way, why shouldn't "Live England" be recognized as the subjunctive?

Cheers


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## Sepia

Vikingo said:


> Hi all,
> 
> in Norwegian we say both "Leve Norge!" and "Lenge leve Norge!". I think the first one is a bit more common.
> 
> By the way, why shouldn't "Live England" be recognized as the subjunctive?
> 
> Cheers


 
It may or may not. My point is, you can't distinguish it easily from an indicative or an imperative, so it will not make a "subjunctive sense" to most people. At least in the Scandinavian languages you can tell it is NOT an indicative - so it must mean something else. 

Of course there may be a hundred other reasons why they do not use it that way, but this is at least one more or less logical one.


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## Arrius

In _Long* live* England_ live is definitely subjunctive because of being a wish not an affirmation - we haven't much of the subjunctive left, but, as  has already been mentioned, _Live England_ is just not said.
By the way, so as not to confuse those whose German is weak or non-existent, one says "_Es lebe Schweden!"_ not _Sverige._


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## edward1529

Human beings are by nature lazy! Take the expression "Goodbye." It started out as a sentence in the subjunctive mood: "I wish that God be with ye." The expression next evolved to "That God be with ye" to  "May God be with ye"--"may" is a vestigal use of the earlier conjunctive construction beginning the dependent clause to "That God be with you"--to "God be with ye" to "Good-bye" to "Goodbye." Why are there only five inflections left in Modern American: s, ed (d or t), ing, er, est? What happened to the hundreds of inflections in Anglo-Saxon, the great-great-great-grandfather of Modern American English? Why did Noah Webster name his dictionary An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828):

"Slowly, he [Webster] changed the spelling of words, such that they became "Americanized." He chose _s_ over _c_ in words like _defense,_ he changed the _re_ to _er_ in words like _center,_ he dropped one of the Ls in _traveller,_ and at first he kept the _u_ in words like _colour_ or _favour_ but dropped it in later editions. He also changed "tongue" to "tung."

Why did Webster make these changes? Out of deference to simplicity, the by-product of laziness. 

Now to "Long live the X." It started out similarly to "Goodbye," as a form of the subjunctive in the dependent clause of "I or We wish that the God live for a long time." Not unlike the French: "Nous voulons que le roi vive pendant longtemps." Laziness or "efficiency" or "simplicity" or whatever other word you wish to use led to "Que le roi vive longtemps" to, eventually, "Vive le roi." In English, the subjunctive is also apparent: "We wish that the king live a longtime" to "That the king live a longtime" to "That the king live long" to "May ["may" the modal verbal replacing the conjuctive "that" plus the subjuntive in the dependent clause] the king live long" to "Long live the king."


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## Arrius

There is no need to believe that the introductiory phrase _We wish that_ was ever essential to the loyal greeting "*Long live the King!"* and dropped off through slovenliness leaving the rump sentence (now contracted and rearranged) _..that the King live a long time_: the very essence of an optative subjunctive in whatever language implies that the speaker is expressing a wish. If there is no shedding of part of the original sentence in _vivat rex, es lebe der König. viva el rey _and_ vive le ro_i, why should we assume that something has dropped off from this English utterance with a subjunctive verb? Even the Bantu language Chinyanja uses a subjunctive form to express "long live the Chief" without any preamble containing a verb of wishing. In the French "Qu'il vienne ici" (Let him come here). or in the Lord's Prayer "Thy Kingdom Come", wishes, pious or otherwise, using a subjunctive verb have never needed any verb of wishing. Admittedly, there are only vestiges left of this mood of the verb in English.


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