I don’t feel right in my skin

Hello and welcome to another edition of SoundCzech – Radio Prague’s Czech language series in which you can learn idioms through song lyrics. Today, we’ll be listening to a song called S cizí ženou v cizím pokoji and the phrase to look out for is “nejsem ve své kůži”:

The title of the song S cizí ženou v cizím pokoji means “in a strange room with a strange woman”. The singer, who happens to be in this situation, obviously feels uneasy. He hints that by saying “nejsem ve své kůži”, which literally translates as “I don’t feel right in my skin”. Listen to the phrase once again:

When you are not feeling right in your skin and you are really sick of something, you may even feel like “jumping out of your skin”, as it is expressed by the phrase “vyskočit” or “vyletět z kůže”. I guess everyone feels this way once in a while, expect perhaps those with “hippo skin” or “hroší kůže”, which is the Czech equivalent of being thick-skinned. Czechs can also have “goose skin”, unlike the English, who have “goose bumps”.

You can also get under someone else’s skin - “dostat se někomu pod kůži” and you can even find yourselves “in someone else’s skin “, or, as we say in Czech, “být v cizí kůži”. The closest English translation of this phrase is “to be in someone else’s shoes”.

And finally some skin-related phrases that have identical meaning in Czech and in English: “get soaked to the skin” – “promoknout na kůži” and “save one’s skin” – “zachránit si kůži”. And I am afraid that’s all we have time for today. If you want to check this or any of the previous lessons, go to our website - that is at www.radio.cz. Thank you for listening and nashledanou!