Czech verbs use the conjugation system which means that each grammatical person (I, you, we etc.) has a unique form. In this long lesson, you will learn the most important verb TO BE (být) and its negative and question forms.

Personal Pronouns

Before we get to the actual verb, let’s learn the personal pronouns:

You (sg.) and You (pl.)

Unlike English, the Czech language has two different pronouns for the pronoun YOU. Talking to or about one person, use TY. For more people always use VY. Look at the following examples:

Verb TO BE (BÝT)

Lets combine these pronouns with the verb to be (být).

There are some affirmative sentences to work with:

Omitting Personal Pronouns

As you can see, each grammatical person has a unique form of the verb, this is called conjugation. Therefore, personal pronouns are usually omitted and not used in everyday speech unless you need to emphasise the subject of the sentence. Examine the following examples without pronouns. The sentences are easy to understand even without using já, ty, my and oni.

Throughout the lessons, you will be strongly encouraged NOT to use personal pronouns. You will sound much more natural without them.

The only personal pronoun which is always used is TO (it) (except for a few uses discussed in further lessons).

Forming Negatives

Negative forms are very easy to create. You only need to add a negative prefix NE- in front of the verb.

The only exception is the third person singular (he, she, it) whose negative form is NENÍ.

Forming Questions

Questions are also easy to form. Like in English, you only need to change the word order so that the sentence starts with the verb.

Again, remember to omit the personal pronouns! They would sound extremely strange when used in questions.

However, the Czech word order is more free than the one of most other languages. This means you can also create questions by using the affirmative word order, placing a question mark at the end and raising your intonation towards the end of the sentence.

This is not recommended to the beginners as it requires practise. In this course, you will be usually required to form questions starting with a verb.

Forming Answers

There are two ways how to answer questions. Either short or long. In the short version, you never use the personal pronoun. The long version is actually a new sentence on its own and can include ten, ta, to when addressing something in the third person.

You may be tempted to say Ano, my jsme. or Ne, my nejsme. due to the English language influence. However, these forms with the personal pronoun are wrong!

Before you move on…

So far, this has been the longest and the most difficult lesson. Do not hurry to the next one and rather spend time reading it again and practising. If you have any questions, ask in the Discussion section below. Do not forget to revise all the vocabulary you have learn to this point.