Neřeš to –let it drop!
Welcome to another edition of SoundCzech –Radio Prague’s Czech language series in which you can learn new phrases with the help of song lyrics. Today’s song is by a rapper going by the name of Johnny Machette – it is called Neřeš to – meaning don’t deal with this, or drop it –and that’s the phrase to look out for today.
Neřeš to is a highly colloquial expression that you will only hear in speech – and it has plenty of synonyms in Czech – nech to plavat – let it flow, kašli na to– cough on that, or nech to bejt– let it be – are just some of the expressions you are likely to hear on a daily basis when people want to wave away a problem. Neřeš to is the typical teenagers response to a parents query about school or a problem that they consider to be beneath their attention.
Another way of saying neřeš to -don’t bother dealing with this problem – is nelam si s tím hlavu, or nedělej si hlavu – mean don’t rack your brains over this or don’t give yourself a big head over this problem. Or as some people would phrase it –pusť to z hlavy – let this out of your head, just drop it.
If you take their advice and want to answer in kind you can say – je mi to volný – it is all the same to me, je mi to ukradený, it is something I can do without, or je mi to fuk – fuk being an expression that is hard to translate but is associated with something disappearing into thin air. And ,so as to give you the option of striking a more positive note, the expression for “I care about this, this is something I feel strongly about” is na tom mi záleží–this is important to me and you can always add chci to řešit – I want to deal with it. Thanks for learning Czech with me and nashledanou!