Nouns: Animacy

01

The Accusative Singular

This is where the split shows most. An animate masculine borrows the genitive form for its accusative; an inanimate one keeps the nominative unchanged. The sentences above show the pair: kluk becomes kluka, while stůl stays as it is.

• Znáš toho psa?

  Do you know that dog?

• Znáš ten dům?

  Do you know that house?

02

The Nominative Plural

The second place it shows is the plural subject form. Animate masculines take -i, -ové or -é, and the last consonant of the stem often softens before -i. Inanimates take -y and change nothing.

• kluk - kluci
• pán - páni, pánové
• stůl - stoly

• Kluci jsou tady.

  The boys are here.

• Stoly jsou tady.

  The tables are here.

03

Adjectives Follow

An adjective in front of an animate masculine plural takes its own animate ending, so the distinction is visible twice over in the same phrase.

• Moji kamarádi jsou milí.

  My friends are nice.

• Moje počítače jsou staré.

  My computers are old.

04

The Past Tense Follows Too

In the plural past, animate masculines take -li and everything else takes -ly, so the choice of ending reports what kind of subject the sentence has.

• Kluci přišli.

  The boys came.

• Vlaky přijely.

  The trains arrived.

05

Why the Accusative Borrows

The reason is old but simple. Czech marks the subject and the object by their endings rather than by word order, and for masculine nouns the two forms had fallen together. Borrowing the genitive gave animate nouns - the ones most likely to be either doer or done-to - a distinct object form again.

• Pes vidí kluka.

  The dog sees the boy.

06

Only in the Masculine

It is worth saying plainly what animacy does not touch. Feminine and neuter nouns have one accusative singular apiece whether they name a person or a thing, and their plurals make no such split either. A girl and a book behave alike.

• Vidím sestru.

  I see my sister.

• Vidím knihu.

  I see a book.

07

Where the Line Falls

Animals count as animate, down to the smallest, and so do words for people used loosely of things. A handful of nouns naming lifeless things sit on the animate side for historical reasons alone, and they are learned one at a time rather than reasoned out.

• Mám psa a kočku.

  I have a dog and a cat.

• Vidím ptáka.

  I see a bird.

• Znám jeho majitele.

  I know its owner.