Past Tense How is the past tense formed in Czech? How can it be translated into English? What complications of past-tense usage need to be noted?
The past tense in Czech is formed by combining an auxiliary verb – which indicates the person and number of the verb’s subject – with a past form of the main verb. The past form of the main verb is called the past participle or the l-participle, and it agrees in gender and number with the subject of the verb. Here are some examples of the past tense that have been analyzed for auxiliary verb (bolded) and l-participle (bolded and underlined): Tam jsme celou noc tancovali. We danced all night there.
Byli jste někdy v České republice? Have you ever been in the Czech Republic?
Když jsem byla malá, bydlela jsem v Austrálii. When I was little, I used to live in Australia.
Už máš, co jsi chtěl? Do you already have what you wanted?
Moře vypadalo jako zrcadlo. The sea looked like a mirror.
Hokejisté vyhráli zlato! The hockey players won gold!
Nečekaně zemřel zpěvák Petr Muk. The singer Petr Muk has unexpectedly died.
Psi štěkali a kočky mňoukaly. The dogs were barking and the cats were meowing.
Notice that the Czech past tense can be translated variously into English. Thus the past-tense form Bydlel/Bydlela jsem… could be rendered — depending on the context that it occurs in — as I was living…, I lived…, I have lived…, or I used to live... Notice also that the auxiliary verb in third-person singular and plural (the last four examples above) is a null verb. In other words, there is no auxiliary verb for these cases; the l-participle alone suffices to render the past tense. Finally note the various forms of the l-participle as it takes endings appropriate to the number and gender of the subject: -l (masculine singular); -la (feminine singular or neuter plural); -lo (neuter singular); -li (masculine animate plural); -ly (feminine plural and masculine inanimate plural).
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Given their need to be in grammatical agreement, l-participles for the pronoun vy cover a whole range of possibilities depending on the number and gender of the vy subject: Byl jste někdy v Praze?
The addressee is one male.
Byla jste někdy v Praze?
The addressee is one female.
Byli jste někdy v Praze?
The addressee is plural and contains at least one male.
Byly jste někdy v Praze?
The addressee is plural and all female.
To see how these factors play out in ll the past-tense forms of a given verb, here is the past paradigm of být followed by some examples of its usage: Singular
Plural
(já)
byl / byla jsem
(my)
byli / byly jsme
(ty)
byl / byla jsi
(vy)
byli / byly jste
(on)
byl
(oni)
byli
(ona) byla
(ony)
byly
(ono) bylo
(ona)
byla
[sg formal: byl / byla jste]
Byla jsem celý víkend v práci. I [fem] was at work all weekend.
Všichni tři byli docela normální kluci. All three were completely normal boys.
Ještě jsme v Americe nebyly. We [fem pl] haven’t been to America yet.
Holky byly unavené. The girls were tired.
Okno bylo rozbito. The window was broken.
S kým jsi byl nejvíc spokojen? Who were you [masc sg] most satisfied with?
Kde jste byli minulý týden? Where were you [masc pl] last week?
Kdo už byl někdy v Evropě? Who has ever been to Europe?
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The Czech past tense combines with verbal aspect to indicate an activity or process in the past (via the imperfective aspect) or a completed event (perfective aspect). Note the contrasts in meaning: Dlouho jsem psala esej, ale ještě jsem ho nenapsala. I was writing the essay for a long time, but I haven’t finished writing it yet. psát = imperfective napsat = perfective
Kapitán hodně pil. Podle mého vypil nejméně litr tvrdého alkoholou. The captain was drinking a lot. In my estimation he drank up at least a liter of hard alcohol. pít = imperfective vypít = perfective
To negate a past-tense utterance, simply add ne- to the l-participle: Manželé už nebydleli spolu. The husband and wife weren’t living together any more.
Michal v životě vůbec nic nevařil. Michael hasn’t cooked anything at all in his whole life.
Dřív jsem na veřejnosti nezpívala. I haven’t sung in public before.
Nikdo doma nebyl. No one was at home.
Ty jsi domácí úkol neudělala? You haven’t done your homework?
Formation of the l-participle The l-participle of a verb is regularly formed by dropping the -t of the infinitive and adding -l in its place. Thus: vidět: tancovat: dělat: mluvit:
viděl, viděla… tancoval, tancovala… dělal, dělala… mluvil, mluvila…
In monosyllabic infinitives with long vowels, the vowels almost always shorten in the l-participle (the shifts of -í- to -ě- and -ou- to -u- are, historically speaking, instances of shortening): být: mít: chtít: pít: dát:
byl, byla… měl, měla… chtěl, chtěla… pil, pila… dal, dala…
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psát: minout:
psal, psala… minul, minula…
Some monosyllabic verbs in -át retain the long vowel in the past; common examples include hrát (hrál, hrála), stát (stál, stála), bát se (bál se, bála se), and přát (přál, přála). Many verbs have l-participles that cannot be predicted from the infinitive and must be memorized, although sometimes they share something in common with the non-past conjugation. Some common examples include the following: péct: říct: číst: jíst: pomoct: moct: jít:
pekl, pekla… řekl, řekla… četl, četla… jedl, jedla… pomohl, pomohla… mohl, mohla… šel, šla…
non-past: řeknu, řekneš… non-past: čtu, čteš… non-past: (oni) jedí non-past: (já) mohu
Word order and the past tense Past-tense auxiliary verbs are generally found in the second position in a sentence or clause. This is evident in all the examples given here.
Some further complications For reflexive verbs used in the past-tense ty form, the auxiliary verb jsi combines with the reflexive se and si to yield ses and sis respectively: Jak bylo? Měla ses dobře? Povídej a nic nevynech! How was it? Did you have a good time? Tell me and don’t leave anything out! mít se = měla ses
Co sis koupil jako suvenýr? What did you buy yourself for a souvenir? koupit si = koupil sis
Mlčky jsi stál a ty ses bál mluvit. You stood quietly and you were afraid to speak. bát se = bál ses
In spoken Czech, the -l of the masculine singular form of some l-participles is often dropped. These are usually short verbs and always end in a stem-final consonant. Common examples include: říct:
řekl > řek
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moct:
mohl > moh
Also in spoken Czech, the jsi auxiliary can shorten to -s and combine with the initial word of the clause. Examples include: Tys tam nebyla! You weren’t there!
Je skvělý, žes všechny ty testy tak zvládla. It’s great that you aced all those tests.
Cos tam dělal? What were you doing there?
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