The sun came out today

Hello and welcome to the newest edition of SoundCzech. To help you shake off the winter blues, and learn a bit of Czech in the process, we will listen today to Jaromír Nohavica’s song Ahoj, Slunko, which translates as “Hi, sun”. And it is the sun, often elusive at this time of year, that we will be talking about today, and also a bit about compliments. So listen to how the song begins, with Nohavica addressing the sun – ‘slunko’ – and giving it a first compliment.

Photo: Barbora Kmentová

Actually, ‘Slunko’ is a more informal way of addressing the sun. The proper word for sun in Czech is ‘slunce’. Nohavica tells the sun ‘tobě to sekne’, which means ‘you are looking good’. Although, literally ‘sekne’, which comes from the verb ‘seknout’, means to cut or chop off. Another way of telling someone that they look good is ‘sluší ti to’. ‘Tobě to sekne’ is used less often, and it is interesting that Nohavica actually has another, more famous song called “Až to se mnou sekne”, where he uses the ‘sekne’ to mean ‘once I’m dead’. But not to bring up a sad, or ‘smutný’, topic, let’s get back to the sun.

To fight the blues, the singer asks the sun to keep shining for him – ‘dál mi sviť’. ‘Svítit’ means to shine. When in the middle of summer a Czech says ‘slunce pálí’, that means it’s shinning strongly, or it burns. But when you get burnt by the sun, use the verb ‘spálit se‘. If you are smart, though, and use sunblock - instead of burning you can ‘opálit se’, or get a tan.

And just as Nohavica at the end of the song, here is hoping the sun will not climb, or ‘zaleze’, behind the clouds ‘za mraky’ just yet and will stay with us just a bit longer. Many of our listeners will know that ‘ahoj’ can be used to say both ‘hi’ and ‘bye’, so we finish this SoundCzech with an ‘ahoj’ to you and ‘ahoj slunko’.