Lesson 4– Grammar (pronouns, conjugation of verbs)

  Hello, I'm here again. You don't have to pretend to be happy, but if you want to learn Czech, you should. Muhehe.

Verb conjugation

       Here comes the difficult part of the Czech language. Not unmanageable but still pretty hard to learn. You don't have to memorize all of the verb conjugations now. Your brain will learn them when reading.        Unfortunately, you'll have to learn lots of words to be capable of reading a Czech text. So, now what you must do is to memorize these... and some more. ^_^
         I don't want to bother you with all of them now, so I'll be putting them here on this website one by one.

       So, let's start. Here are three simple rules for you to take into your account:
1) Verb infinitives always end with -t.
2) Some of the verbs have reflexive pronouns "se" or "si" (meaning "myself, yourself, ...") but can be used without them gaining a different meaning.
3) Verbs can be used without an object (noun, pronoun, ...). (Like in Spanish.)

Verb BÝT ['beet] (=to be)
Já               jsem     My           jsme
Ty              jsi         Vy            jste
On/a/o        je         Oni/y/a      jsou
(present tense forms)

Note: The Czech language has three tenses only, to your relief. :)

         Verbs with reflexive pronouns can change their position in a sentence depending on whether there is a subject or not. As usual, the best way to explain is to show you: Ona si hraje s panenkou. The reflexive pronoun is prior to the verb. Another example: Hraje si. The subject is not present, therefore the pronoun and verb have switched. (Conjugation of the verb "hrát si" is here.)

         All (read: those I managed to make so far) verb conjugations are listed in a separate section.

Pronouns

        As you (probably) have deduced, the basic pronouns are: já, ty, on, ona, ono, my, vy, oni, ony, ona. Seems like a lot of pronouns, right? I'll explain here:

Já ['ya:h] I                   My ['mih] we

Ty ['tih] you                 Vy ['vih] you

On ['oan] he                 Oni ['oa-nyi] they (for masculine gender & for masculine gender and feminine gender)

Ona ['oa-nah] she        Ony ['oa-nih] they (for feminine gender)

Ono ['oa-noh] it           Ona ['oa-nah] they (for neuter gender)

Note: The pronouns can be inflected (the Czech language has seven cases). I'll teach you the declension later.

        There are also demonstrative pronouns which you can use while learning new Czech words. These are ten (masculine sing.) , ta (feminine sing.), to (neuter sing.), ti (masculine plural and masculine + feminine plural), ty (feminine plural), ta (neuter plural). I'll list them again and you try to say the genders and numbers aloud while reading them.

ten           ti

ta             ty

to             ta

love & peace
Ciray