Learn the words with a vowel change ů to o (and also í to ě)

Already at their first lessons foreign students come across such basic Czech words as stůl, dům or kůň. A couple of lessons down the road they are followed by nůž and sůl. What leaves the students unhappily surprised is that the root of the word changes as the word declines and one needs to say na stole, v domě, na koni, nožem and se solí.

This change has its historical causes, which one can read about (in Czech) elsewhere. It is the practical side of things that interests us here though, specifically, which words belong to this group and how they behave.

The vowel change happens in call grammatical cases except for the 1st (nominative) and the 4th (accusative) cases in the singular. This is how the declension of the word stůl – table looks like:

case singular plural
1. stůl stoly
2. stolu stolů
3. stolu stolům
4. stůl stoly
5. stole stoly
6. stole, stolu stolech
7. stolem stoly

The most frequent words of this kind are:

dům house parkovat u domu
dvůr yard hrát si na dvoře
kůň horse vyfotit se na koni
nůž knife krájet nožem
sůl salt jíst chléb se solí
Bůh God věřit v Boha
vůz car, vagon jet vozem

Other, not so frequent, words are:

hůl stick chodit o holi
vůl ox ty vole!
důl mine pracovat v dole
lůj tallow promazat lojem
hnůj dung být po krk v hnoji

 

Note

Words kůň and vůl denote living beings and therefore belong to the masculine animate grammatical gender. Due to this their form in the singular in the 4th (accusative) case is different from that in the 1st (nominative) case, which causes the change of ů to o also in the 4th (accusative) case in the singular:

case singular plural
1. kůň koně
2. koně koní, koňů
3. koni, koňovi koním, koňům
4. koně koně
5. koni koně, koni, koňové
6. koni, koňovi koních
7. koněm koni, koňmi

 

Interesting fact

A totally opposite behaviour is shown by the verb stonat – to be sick. It has o in the root in the infinitive form, which in all finite forms becomes ů:

person singular plural
1. stůňu stůněme
2. stůněš stůněte
3. stůně stůňou

 

Words with ů in the root that have no change to o

It is important to say that the change does not happen in all one-syllable nouns that have ů in the 1st (nominative) case. Many such words keep the ů in all cases. Some of the most frequent words of this type are kůl, trůn, růst, půst, kůže, půda and vůle:

kůl pole, stake na kůlu
trůn throne na trůnu
růst growth během růstu
půst fast konec půstu
kůže skin na kůži
půda soil; loft na půdě
vůle will proti vůli

 

Note

Take caution with the word růst! Where it‘s a noun (growth), ů remains in the root in all cases. But where it’s a verb (to grow), the change does take place, and all the finite forms will have o in the root:

person singular plural
1. rostu rosteme
2. rosteš rostete
3. roste rostou

 

Vowel change from í to ě

In addition to the change from ů to o, a change from í to ě happens, but only in two words:

vítr wind jít proti větru
sníh snow uváznout ve sněhu

This change follows the same principle as for the words with ů in the root. í changes to ě in all cases except for the 1st (nominative) and the 4th (accusative) cases in the singular:

case singular plural
1. vítr větry
2. větru větrů
3. větru větrům
4. vítr větry
5. větre, větře větry
6. větru větrech
7. větrem větry

 

You can always find word forms in all cases and numbers in the Internet Language Reference Book maintained by the Institute of the Czech Language.

 

Now let’s consolidate the newly acquired knowledge. Write 5 to 10 sentences with these words and send them to me to check:

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