Jdi se bodnout

Hello and welcome to this edition of Sound Czech, Radio Prague's weekly language programme that introduces you to Czech idioms by way of Czech music. The song today is Šachy, or Chess, by the Nahoru po schodišti dolů Band from their album Wet Laundry. The phrase you're looking for is “jdi se bodnout”.

That was the Nahoru po schodišti dolů Band, telling someone “Go stab yourself, girl”. It might sound a bit brutal, but it’s actually common enough to make it our phrase for this week’s Sound Czech. The intent is less malicious than it seems – the singer, we assume, merely wants the person to “get lost”, as we would say in English. The phrase however is Jdi se bodnout, “go stab yourself”, and it’s the first line of the refrain - have another listen:

To English sensibilities it may seem needlessly graphic to tell someone to go stab themselves, but sure, this is all part and parcel with the occasional murderous tendencies of Czech phraseology. In English your frustration with someone might manifest itself in your saying “I’m going to kill you!”, which works in Czech as well, but lacks something of the chilling gusto of common Czech phrases like “nadělám z tebe sekanou”– I’m going to make meatloaf out of you – or “stáhnu tě z kůže”– I’m going to flay the skin off you – both of which are equivalents to the not particularly nice but nonetheless benign “I’m going to kill you”.

The peace-loving Czechs are not harder on others than they are on themselves, however. Exasperation with one’s own self is routinely expressed with a casual suicide threat, such as hodim si mašli– I’m going to hang myself, or “throw a bow”, literally. If you’re just having one of those days it’s also perfectly understandable if you lament aloud já se picnu, or I’m going to shoot myself. So for Czech listeners, careful not to translate your frustration literally else you will have your English friends very concerned about you indeed! And for English speakers, if one of your Czech friends suddenly wants to “chop you into bits and bobs” (rozsekám tě na cimprcampr), don’t take it personally, he does that to everybody. So that’s it for this week’s Sound Czech, thanks for listening and nashledanou!