Going from bad to worse

Welcome to another edition of SoundCzech in which you can learn useful phrases with the help of song lyrics. Today’s song is by the current teenage idol Ewa Farna and is called Z bláta do louže – which coincidentally is the phrase to listen out for.

The phrase “z bláta do louže” means going from “the mud into a puddle” in other words going from bad to worse and is the Czech equivalent of the English saying “from the frying pan into the fire”. Or else you can say “z deště pod okap” which means going from the rain under the gutter.

Another way of saying that things are going badly is to say “jde to z kopce” which means “things are going downhill” or “jde to do háje” which is frequently used in colloquial Czech and means “it’s going to the grove” or it is headed for a dead-end. When something can’t get any worse Czechs say that whatever it is has arrived at the grove “je to v háji” or “je to zabitý”, meaning “it is dead”.

A rather more polite way of expressing the same sentiment is to use numericals and say “jde to od deseti k pěti”– in other words “things are going from ten to five”. I hope that you don’t get to use the phrase too often and that for you things always go the other way round. Thanks for learning Czech with me and nashledanou.