9.10 – Review of Genitive Plural (talking about quantity)
We’re also going to need to review the genitive plural in order to count and quantify things:
|
Masculine Animate |
Masculine Inanimate |
Feminine |
Neuter |
Hard stem Nouns |
pánů |
hradů |
žen |
měst |
Soft stem Nouns |
mužů |
počítačů |
růží / kolejí / věcí |
moří / náměstí |
Adjectives |
-ých / -ích |
Masculine
Make sure you include the kroužek over the ending -ů or it will be confused with the genitive singular (fotka stolu ‘a picture of a table’ vs. fotka stolů ‘a picture of tables’).
hodně kamarádů
‘a lot of friends’
několik bytů
‘a few apartments’
Feminine and Neuter
feminine
The ending for the feminine is -ø (i.e. no ending) for all hard-stem nouns, and soft-stem nouns ending in -ice (e.g. ulice ‘street’) and -yně (e.g. sportovkyně ‘[female] athlete’). This means that you delete the final -a or -e from these words to form the genitive plural.
hodně knih
‘a lot of books’
několik map
‘a few maps’
neuter
The ending for the neuter is also -ø for all hard-stem nouns and soft-stem nouns ending in -iště (e.g. letiště ‘airport’). The genitive plural of soft-stem nouns ending in -iště is -išť (the final ť remains soft).
několik piv
‘a few beers’
***fill vowels*** When you remove the final vowel (i.e. -ø for many feminine and neuter nouns), sometimes you will end up with a consonant cluster at the end of the word, e.g. studentka → studentk. In these instances, Czech uses the fill vowel –e– to break up the consonant cluster.
hodně studentek ‘many students (f.)’
‘a few windows’
pět jablek ‘five apples’ |
Adjective are relatively straightforward with a single ending regardless of gender:
|
Masculine Animate |
Masculine Inanimate |
Feminine |
Neuter |
Hard stem Adjective |
-ých nových |
|||
Soft stem Adjective |
-ích moderních |
Karel má hodně nových kamarádů.
‘Karel has many new friends.’
Koupil jsem si pět zajímavých knih.
‘I bought five interesting books.’