Understanding Czech Cases
A guide to the function and usage of the 7 Czech grammatical cases.
What is case?
The word case refers to a set of endings that are used to indicate how words relate to one another. For instance, who does what to whom. In Czech, it is expressed through different endings. Nouns, pronouns, numerals and adjectives all use different case ending to express things like being an object (receiver) or a subject (initiator), or belonging to something. All prepositions also require that a noun has a case ending.
In the English sentence, Petr has a son the relationship between Petr and his son is set by the fact that the word Petr precedes the verb and the word son follows it. In Czech, this doesn't mean much, because Czech word order is more flexible. The relatioship between Petr and his some is captured by the case endings: Petr má syna. Thanks to the endings, you can also say Syna má Petr and the meaning is the same.
All verbs require the words that follow them to change form (that is add an ending). Most of the time, it is the object, but often there are other roles such as recipient or part of something.
In traditional grammar, cases have names such as accusative or dative that hint at the function. The names of the cases are not important, however. What really matters, is how the case is used in the language. What’s more, Czechs will mostly not be familiar with these names, they know the cases by their number.
What are the functions of Czech cases?
Czech has six cases that describe the role of the word in a sentence. In English, they are expressed either through word order or prepositions. Below are examples comparing English functions with Czech equivalents:
| English | Function | Czech |
|---|---|---|
| A friend wrote. He is a friend. | subject | Kamarád napsal. Je kamarád. |
| A friend wrote a letter. | object | Kamarád napsal dopis. |
| A friend of our family wrote a letter. | of sth/sb | Kamarád naší rodiny napsal dopis. |
| A friend of our family wrote a letter to Jana. | to sth/sb | Kamarád naší rodiny napsal dopis Janě. |
| A friend of our family wrote a letter to Jana in a car. | in/about/... sth/sb | Kamarád naší rodiny napsal dopis Janě v autě. |
| He wrote a letter with a fountain pen. | with/by/through sth/sb | Napsal dopis plnícím perem. |
| English | Function | Czech |
|---|---|---|
| A friend is here. He is a friend. | subject | Kamarád je tady. Je kamarád. |
| I see a friend. | object | Vidím kamaráda. |
| This is a story of a friend. | of sth/sb | To je příběh kamaráda. |
| I gave a book to a friend. | to sth/sb | Dal jsem knihu kamarádovi. |
| This is a story about a friend. | in/about/... sth/sb | To je příběh o kamarádovi. |
| I will come with a friend. | with/by/through sth/sb | Přijdu s kamarádem. |
| English | Function | Czech |
|---|---|---|
| A book is here. It is a book. | subject | Kniha je tady. Je to kniha. |
| I have a book. | object | Mám knihu. |
| A page of the book. | of sth/sb | Strana knihy. |
| He admitted to the book. | to sth/sb | Přiznal se k té knize. |
| He wrote it in the book. | in/about/... sth/sb | Napsal to v té knize. |
| He hit him with the book. | with/by/through sth/sb | Uhodil ho tou knihou. |
The underlined words or endings have equivalent functions in both languages. All the cases, except the subject, can be used with prepositions. The 6th case (Locative) is only used after a preposition.
You can ask for all the italicized words using question words WHO? and WHAT?. In Czech, it is the same only there is a different form of Who? What? for each case. Therefore the cases are named by their Czech Who? What? questions, which is how Czech children learn them in school.
Models
Different types of nouns and other words change their forms differently. Each group is named after a model word and it is also called a model (vzor in Czech). There are fifteen models of Czech nouns, including the more prominent sub-models. They are all listed in the chart below. Each model is given a common word to represent it. Different textbooks use different example words. Here we chose ones we hope are most useful for learners:
TEN: kamarád (friend), muž (man), čaj (tea), rohlík (bread roll), poradce (advisor), policista (policeman)
TA: voda (water), rýže (rice), daň (tax), noc (night)
TO: pivo (beer), kuře (chicken), nádraží (station), moře (sea)
All models can have further submodels for some exceptions but we ignore these here. For example, rohlík has a common submodel les (forest) but we treat them as the same model. They only differ slightly in some cases.
Model and case are often used to mean the same thing. In fact, model describes which particular ending a word will take in a certain case. Once you know the gender, you can most often tell the model from the form in the Kdo? Co? case. But there are many words, where this is not possible (for example, feminine (TA) nouns ending in a consonant).