Wandering shoes

Welcome to another edition of SoundCzech Radio Prague’s Czech language course in which you can learn new phrases with the help of song lyrics. Today’s song is by Waldemar Matuška and is called Boty toulavý.

Boty toulavý means wandering shoes and as you can guess the phrase refers to a wanderer – someone who can’t abide to spend a longer time in one place. The phrase that it originally comes from is boty z toulavého telete– to have leather shoes made from a calf that liked to wander. A less poetic way of saying the same thing is to say nemá stání– he can’t stand around.

Waldemar Matuška sings about wanderlust “I love to put on my wandering shoes, I’ll have no other, because these are the only shoes that don’t pinch my toes.” In Czech you will hear people refer not only to their wandering shoes but also to their wandering feet and not least to their wandering blood – toulavá krev. But of them all, boty toulavý is the most frequently used phrase.

There are also expressions to describe the opposite – the expression for a homebody in Czech is “domácí typ” in other words a domestic sort of person. Or you can say that he is usedlej– which is derived from usídlit se– meaning - to settle somewhere. So usedlej means settled. And a quaint expression used in the old days is “kam ho ráno postavíš, tam ho večer najdeš”– where you put him in the morning, you’ll find him in the evening – often used to describe passive children who can spend hours playing in one place. And I’m afraid that’s all we have time to cover today – if you have boty toulavý– come visit the Czech Republic. This is Daniela Lazarová saying thanks for learning Czech with me and nashledanou.