Hello and welcome to another episode of Radio Prague's Czech language programme, the ABC of Czech. We are nearing the end of the alphabet - today's letter is V and with it comes the topic of village life. In this sense, the letter v works well in Czech, too, for village is vesnice and the rural countryside is venkov.
To us city rats, life in the countryside may seem idyllic and often we wish we could live in the country - na vesnici or na venkov", close to nature - blízko pøírodì. It is a Czech national custom that people leave cities en masse on Friday evening and travel to their weekend houses or cottages - chaty a chalupy - away in the country where they spend the weekend toiling away in the garden - zahrádka, weeding their vegetable patches - zeleninové záhonky and tending their hotbeds - paøeni¹tì and greenhouses - skleníky.
Photo: Archiv of ČRo7
That is hardly the idea of a relaxing weekend for the countrymen - vesnièané or venkované, who work in agriculture - zemìdìlství, on a farm - statek or in a forest - les. Villages are typically surrounded by fields - pole, meadows - louky, orchards - sady, or pastures - pastviny, full of grazing cattle - dobytek. The most common Czech farm animals are cows - krávy and pigs - prasata. Sheep - ovce - and goats - kozy - are not as common. I had better stop here because village life to me is really ¹panìlská vesnice. This is an idiom which literally means "a Spanish village" but it can be loosely translated as "it is all Greek to me". Anyway, townspeople or countrymen, these days we all live in a global village - globální vesnice.
And that's the end of today's programme, but we'll be back with more next time, please listen again, if you can. Until then na shledanou, bye-bye.
