I am fed up
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 the group Alkehol and it is called Guardian Angel. The phrase to listen out for is “on už mě má plný zuby”.
“On už mě má plný zuby” literally translates as his teeth are full of me and means he is fed up with me. He has had as much of me as he can take. In this case the singer says his guardian angel is fed up with getting him out of trouble. You can use the expression to refer to anything and everything from staple food that you get served up far too often, to school which is a drag or someone who gets on your nerves and is around you far too often.
The simplest and most explicit way of stating the same – and one that I would recommend to beginners (in view of the fact that many foreigners are sure to have trouble pronouncing the three consonant word for neck “krk” ) is to say instead “mám toho dost” which means simply “I have had enough” and sounds very emphatic indeed, to the point of being openly rude. If you are going to refuse a second helping in Czech it would be advisable to say “mám dost, děkuji” or I have had enough, thank you. “Už toho bylo dost” or “there’s been enough of that already” was one of the slogans chanted during the Velvet Revolution when the crowd wanted to send the communists in power a cryptic “we’ve had enough of you”.
On the other hand, if your resources are stretched to the limit by some activity which does not normally irritate you can say “mám toho plný kecky”– my tennis shoes are full of it – I can’t handle any more. “Už melu z posledního”, means I am grinding the last of something –or grinding to a halt. Hopefully this Czech lesson has not proved too fatiguing. This is Daniela Lazarová saying thanks for learning Czech with me and na shledanou.
