Passive Participles and Their Short Forms

01

How It Is Made

Most verbs replace the infinitive's -t with -n and add adjective endings. A smaller group takes -t instead, and those are mostly short verbs.

• zavřít - zavřený (closed)
• otevřít - otevřený (open)
• rozbít - rozbitý (broken)
• unavit - unavený (tired)

• Jsem unavená.

  I'm tired.

02

It Agrees Like an Adjective

Once made, the participle is an adjective and nothing about it is verbal any more. It declines through all the cases and takes the gender of its noun.

• Zavřené dveře.

  A closed door.

• V zavřeném obchodě.

  In a closed shop.

03

The Short Form

Beside the full adjective there is a shorter form with no ending on the masculine and a bare -a, -o, -i or -y elsewhere. It is used only after být, never in front of a noun, and it reports a state resulting from an action rather than a permanent quality.

• Obchod je zavřen.

  The shop is closed.

• Dveře jsou otevřeny.

  The doors are open.

The full form is far commoner in speech; the short form belongs to notices, announcements and careful writing.

04

The Neuter Short Form Alone

The neuter short form has a life of its own. With no subject at all it states that a place is in a certain condition, and this is how Czech asks whether somewhere is open.

• Máte otevřeno?

  Are you open?

• Je zavřeno.

  It's closed.

05

Negation

A participle takes ne- like any other word built from a verb, and the negated form is a perfectly ordinary adjective. Several of the commonest Czech adjectives are negated participles that no longer feel like verbs at all.

• zaměstnaný - nezaměstnaný (unemployed)

• Je nezaměstnaná.

  She is unemployed.

06

Two Meanings in One Word

The full participle can describe either a state or the action that produced it, and Czech leaves the two to context. Otevřený is both opened and simply open, and only the sentence around it decides.

• Otevřený obchod.

  An open shop.

07

Which Verbs Can Do It

Only a verb that takes a direct object can form this participle, since there has to be something for the action to have been done to. Verbs like jít or spát have none, and there the construction is simply unavailable.

• Napsaný dopis.

  A written letter.

08

Building a Passive Sentence

Put být in front of a short participle and you have a passive: the thing affected is the subject and the doer is not mentioned. Czech prefers the construction with se in ordinary speech and keeps this one for formal contexts.

• Dopis byl napsán ručně.

  The letter was written by hand.