Cases in Czech
There are seven cases in Czech, and each one has a specific function. I will go through them in the order in which they appear in most Czech language textbooks.
Nominative case (1. pád): The nominative is the case you can find in dictionaries. This case is used for the subject of a sentence. It answers the question “who?” or “what?”. Co to je? To je Praha. - What is it? This is Prague.
If a Czech word is preceded by an one-letter, two-letter orthree-letter word, it is most likely a preposition. Prepositions also appear in English, but there is a big difference: Czech prepositions are never followed by the nominative case (1. pád).
Now, different prepositions go hand in hand with different cases. And that’s basically the key to the secret. You need to know which preposition requires which case.
For example...
Genitive case (2. pád): It is used with prepositions od, z… and some others. Z PRAHY - FROM PRAGUE
It is therefore important to know which case is associated with which preposition. We can look at that next time.