2.6 – mít ACC singular forms (family members)

In this chapter we will be talking more about our families. One question we will be answering is jak velkou máte rodinu? – how big of a family do you have?

One thing you might have immediately now noticed is that the words for big and family have some unfamiliar endings on them (velkou rodinu instead of more familiar velká rodina).

We just spent some time learning the difference between subjects and direct objects. In Czech, there are forms called cases. These are forms that the noun can be in (different endings) that change depending on whether the noun is a subject or a direct object. The names of these cases are nominative and accusative:

Nominative	The subject of a sentence. We have been using the nominative (literally related to the word name) when we have identified things, e.g. to je auto, to je počítač, to je holka…
Accusative	The direct object of a sentence. We will begin to use the accusative forms as we learn more verbs.

We will be focusing on the accusative case during Units 2 and 3 of this course. In this lesson we will begin learning the forms of the accusative singular of nouns in Czech. The accusative is a form of the word that the direct object is in. Remember that the accusative is used for direct objects, i.e. the recipient of the action of the verb. As we talk about our families, we will want to say things like I have a brother, I have two aunts and a cousin, she has a cat, etc. The following sentences in English have green subjects and red direct objects.

1. Jan has a brother.
2. Marie has a sister.
3. Our parents have a dog.
4. My uncle has a son.
5. Ilona and Petr have a child.

Each of the green items above (the subjects) would be in the nominative case. They are the ones doing the act of having. The red items would be in the accusative case. These items are the things that are had – the direct object of the act of having.

Accusative endings for nouns in Czech are given in the table below:

	MA	MI	F	N
Hard stem	-a bratr → bratra	-Ø batoh → batoh (i.e. no change)	-u setra →  sestru	-o pivo → pivo (i.e. no change)
Soft stem	-e synovec → synovce	-Ø počítač → počítač (i.e. no change)	-i sestřenice → sestřenici   -Ø neteř → neteř  (i.e. no change) -Ø věc → věc (i.e. no change)	-e moře → moře  (i.e. no change) -í náměstí → náměstí  (i.e. no change)

In the chart above, you’ll find that the forms you’ll need the most to talk about family members are highlighted. We will focus on learning the rest in unit 3 when we are talking about ordering food, eating and drinking things, etc. (though as a preview you can see a lot of things don’t change for Masculine Inanimate and Neuter). The one instance where a neuter item might come up with family members is with the word dítě (n.).

Jan má bratra.

Jan has a brother.

Marie má sestru.

Marie has a sister.

Naši rodiče mají psa.

Our parents have a dog.

Můj strýc má syna.

My uncle has a son.

Ilona a Petr mají jedno dítě .

Ilona and Petr have one child.

If you want to use the words jeden, jedna, jedno to modify something in the Accusative case, you need the following forms:

	MA	MI	F	N
1	jednoho	jeden	jednu	jedno

        Julie má jednoho syna.

        Julie has one son.

        Honza a Marie mají jednu dceru.

        Honza and Marie have one daughter.

Note, we have already seen some accusative forms, such as poslouchat hudbu (recall that the word for music is hudba). Music is the object of the action of listening. You will find that accusative case forms are extremely common in saying very basic things in Czech so you will need to learn these forms well.