Where beer is brewed, life is good

Hello and welcome to the ABC of Czech. Last week we looked at some vocabulary to do with beer, the most typical Czech beverage, and today we'll look at beer in Czech idioms and sayings.

"A beloved child has many names," as they say in Northern Europe. It is certainly true about beer in the Czech language. Czechs can be quite affectionate when talking about what the common man calls tekutý chléb or liquid bread and exporters tekuté zlato "liquid gold". One affectionate version of the word pivo is pivečko or little beer - but mind you - it has nothing to do with the size of the glass.

And the list goes on: zrzavá voda or rusty water is not often heard these days but you will often come across it in literature. Then there is bahno or mud. Many people refer to a glass of beer as jedno or "one", so they would often say Pojď na jedno, meaning "Let's go and have a beer".

Good beer has to have what is called říz. The word is related to the Czech verb to cut and it means something like strength, kick or strong flavour. A draft beer also has to have dobrou míru - it has to have the right measure, the glass has to be full. But in a typical Czech pub that depends on whether the bartender, výčepní, likes you or not.

There is a traditional rhyming proverb: Kde se pivo vaří, tam se dobře daří. Or Where beer is brewed, life is good.

Beer-lovers pivaři are easy to spot in a crowd because they have distinguishable beer bellies or pivní mozol, literally a beer callus. But they are happy with their bodies and that's why they coined another rhyming proverb: Pivo dělá hezká těla, Beer makes good bodies.

And on that note we will leave you now. And next week we'll be talking about wine in the Czech language. Till then na zdraví! Cheers!