Czech conjugation is the system of conjugation (grammatically-determined modifications) of verbs in Czech.
Czech is a null-subject language, i.e. the subject (including personal pronouns) can be omitted if known from context. The person is expressed by the verb:
The infinitive is formed by the ending -t, formerly also -ti; on some words -ct (-ci):
Somewhat archaically:
Participles are used for forming the past tense, conditionals and the passive voice in Czech. They are related to the short forms of adjectives. Therefore unlike other verb forms, they also express gender which must correspond with the gender of the subject.
The past participle (also known as the "active participle" or "l-participle") is used for forming the past tense and the conditionals.
The passive participle is also called "n/t-participle" and is used for forming the passive voice. There are two types of endings:
The predicate must always be in accordance with the subject in the sentence â in number and person (personal pronouns), and with past and passive participles also in gender. This grammatical principle affects the orthography (see also Czech orthography) â it is especially important for the correct choice and writing of plural endings of participles.
Examples:
The example mentioned shows both past (byl, byla ...) and passive (koupen, koupena ...) participles. The accordance in gender takes effect in the past tense and the passive voice, not in the present and future tenses in active voice.
If the complex subject is a combination of nouns of different genders, masculine animate gender is prior to others and the masculine inanimate and feminine genders are prior to the neuter gender. The neuter endings on the predicate are only used if all nouns in the subject are neuter and plural, otherwise the masculine inanimate/feminine forms are used.
Examples:
Priority of genders:
The transgressive (pà ÂechodnÃÂk) expresses an action which happens coincidentally with or forgoing some other action.
The transgressive (pà ÂechodnÃÂk) is an archaic form of the verb in Czech and Slovak. Nowadays, it is used only occasionally for artistic purposes or in unchanging expressions. Transgressives were still used quite widely in Czech literature in the beginning of the 20th century (not in the spoken language). For example, Jaroslav Haà ¡ek's The Good Soldier à  vejk contains a lot of them.
Czech recognizes present and past transgressives. The present transgressive can express present or future action according to the aspect of the verb it is derived from. The past transgressive is usually derived from perfective verbs.
Examples:
Czech verbs are distinguished by aspect, they are either perfective or imperfective. Perfective verbs indicate the finality of the process. Therefore, they cannot express the present tense.
Perfective verbs are usually formed adding prefixes to imperfective verbs:
Some perfective verbs are not formally related to imperfective ones:
Czech verbs express three absolute tenses â past, present and future. Relativity can be expressed by the aspect, sentence constructions and participles.
The present tense can be expressed in imperfective verbs only.
The present tense is formed by special endings:
Verbs are divided into 5 classes according to the way of forming the present tense. They are described in more detail below.
The past tense is formed by the past participle (in a proper gender form) and present forms of the verb být (to be) which are omitted in the 3rd person. The following example is for the male gender (animate in plural):
DÃÂlat â to do
For the choice of past tense form when the number or gender of the subject may not be clear, see .
In imperfective verbs, it is formed by the future forms of the verb být (to be) and the infinitive:
DÃÂlat â to do
Budu, budeà ¡, ... with infinitive has the same meaning as "(I, you, ...) will" in English. If not followed by an infinitive, it means "(I, you, ...) will be" (i.e. I will be = budu, not budu být).
In some verbs of motion, the future tense is formed by adding the prefix po-/pà ¯- to the present form:
In perfective verbs, the present form expresses the future. Compare:
There is no sequence of tenses in Czech. The types of clauses like in the indirect speech use tenses that express the time which is spoken about. The tense of the subordinate clause is not shifted to the past even though there is the past tense in the main clause:
The imperative mood is formed for the 2nd person singular and plural and the 1st person plural.
In the 2nd person singular, it takes either null ending or -i/-ej ending, according to the verb class.
The 2nd person plural takes the ending -te/-ete/-ejte and the 1st person plural takes -me/-eme/-ejme.
Examples:
The conditionals are formed by the past participle and special forms (derived from Old Czech aorist forms) of the verb být (to be). Following example of the present conditional is for the male gender (animate in plural):
dÃÂlal bych â I would do
There is also the past conditional in Czech but it is usually replaced by the present conditional.
byl bych dÃÂlal â I would have done
By also becomes a part of conjugations aby (so that) and kdyby (if). Therefore, these conjunctions take the same endings:
There are two ways to form the passive voice in Czech:
1. By the verb být (to be) and the passive participle:
2. By adding the reflexive pronoun se:
However, the use of se is not exclusive to the passive voice.
Reflexive pronouns se and si are components of reflexive verbs (se/si is not usually translated into English):
Negation is formed by the prefix ne-. In the future tense and the passive voice it is added to the auxiliary verb být (to be), while in the past tense and in conditionals it is added to the participle.
Unlike English, a negative pronoun must be used with a negative verb (using a positive verb is ungrammatical) (double negative):
In imperative, 0/-te/-me endings are in most verbs, -i/-ete/-eme or -i/-ÃÂte/-ÃÂme if two consonants are at the end of the word-stem.
In imperative, 0/-te/-me endings are in most verbs, -i/-ete/-eme or -i/-ÃÂte/-ÃÂme if two consonants are at the end of the word-stem.
Irregular future tense:
Irregular negation: