Czech Nouns

There are two essential things to know about nouns in Czech.

First, Czech has the concept of grammatical gender. Every noun is either masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Second, Czech nouns change form based on their number (singular, plural, or dual) and case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, instrumental). This process is known as declension. You might also hear the term "inflection" or "casing" used to describe this phenomenon. Adjectives, pronouns and demonstratives, and numbers also change form, but we will focus on nouns on this page.

Gender

Every Czech noun falls into one of three categories: masculine, feminine, or neuter. It's often possible to guess the gender of a noun based on its ending, but there are exceptions.

1. Masculine Nouns:

   • Most nouns ending in a consonant (e.g., stůl - table, pes - dog)
   • Further divided into animate and inanimate categories

2. Feminine Nouns:

   • Most nouns ending in -a (e.g., žena - woman)
   • Almost all nouns ending in -ost (e.g., radost - joy)
   • Some nouns ending in -e (e.g., kůže - skin)
   • Many nouns ending in a soft consonant (e.g., píseň - song)

3. Neuter Nouns:

   • Nouns ending in -o (e.g., město - city)
   • Nouns ending in -í (e.g., stavení - building)
   • Some nouns ending in -e (e.g., moře - sea)

Declension

As mentioned above, Czech nouns change form based on their case and number. This process is known as declension.

It may sound complicated, but it's a common feature in many languages, including English. For example, in English, we say "I" for the subject form of the pronoun and "me" for the object form.

Unfortunately, different words change in different ways. For example, the word "žena" changes to "ženu" in the accusative case, while the word "stůl" stays the same in the accusative case.

Luckily, there are patterns to help you learn how to decline nouns. For example, most neuter nouns ending in -o follow the same pattern, and most feminine nouns ending in -a follow another pattern. There are about a dozen main patterns. Once you learn the declension of one noun, you can apply the same rules to many others (though, as always, there are exceptions).

Number

There are two primary numbers: singular and plural. Additionally, Czech features remnants of the dual form in certain words and expressions, especially when referring to body parts.

Singular

This form is used when referring to one entity. Most nouns, unless inherently plural (like "scissors" or "pants" in English), start with their singular form as the dictionary entry.

Plural

Plural forms are used to denote more than one entity. The formation of the plural is not uniform and varies significantly depending on the gender and the ending of the noun in the nominative singular.

Dual

The dual form is largely historical in the modern Czech language, but it remains in certain fixed expressions, particularly when referring to parts of the body. For instance:

• "ruce" (hands/arms) is used for two hands or arms, while "ruky" is used for more than two in the plural.
• "nohy" can mean two or more legs or feet, depending on context.