Gender

In Czech language, gender does not correspond with the real gender. It is just grammatical gender.

• Masculine animate – almost always for living male creatures (doktor, bratr…)
• Masculine inanimate – many nouns expressing non-living things and abstract expressions (obchod, počítač, nápad…)
• Feminine – living male creatures and many other words
• Neuter – very young creatures and many other words

The most typical endings:

consonant

• very often masculine (doktor, lékař, obchod, počítač…)
• sometimes feminine (kancelář, tramvaj…)
• -um: almost always neuter (centrum, muzeum…)

-a

• very probably feminine (škola, kavárna, maminka…)
• sometimes masculine animate, very often for male persons (kolega, turista, děda, Pepa…)

-o

• almost always neuter (divadlo, kino…)

-e / -ě

• almost always feminine (restaurace, kolegyně…)
• sometimes masculine or neuter (kuře, průvodce…)
• -iště: always neuter (letiště, parkoviště…)
• -ice and -yně always feminine (úřednice, sportovkyně…)

-í

• almost always neuter (nádraží, náměstí…)
• rarely masculine or feminine, but almost always in case professions (recepční, účetní…)

Note

In the book, you can see the genders with the appropriate colour.
When you write new words, always use some sign to learn the gender.
For example:

(ten) dům, (ta) škola, (to) parkoviště
velký dům, velká škola, velké parkoviště