The Locative Plural | Czech Grammar

The locative is the only Czech case that never appears without a preposition — you meet it in o (about), v/ve (in), na (on), při (during), and po (after, around). In the plural, almost every noun, regardless of gender, lands on one of just three endings: -ech, -ách, or -ích. The hard part is not learning the three endings — it is knowing which one a given noun takes, because the choice depends on gender and on the final consonant of the stem.

The practical triad: -ech / -ách / -ích

The smartest way to hold this in your head is to learn the locative plural alongside the other two "oblique" plural cases, because they march in step:

Case	Group A (hard masc/neut)	Group B (hard fem)	Group C (soft + velars)
Dative plural	-ům	-ám	-ím
Locative plural	-ech	-ách	-ích
Instrumental plural	-y	-ami	-emi / -mi

If you already know that hrad goes k hradům (dative) and žena goes k ženám, you can predict o hradech and o ženách. The locative simply swaps the dative's -ům/-ám/-ím for -ech/-ách/-ích. This parallelism is the single most useful thing on this page — see the dative plural and the instrumental plural for the full picture.

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Whenever you are unsure of the locative plural, recall the dative plural first. They share the same stem and the same softening; only the vowel-cluster ending differs (-ům → -ech, -ám → -ách, -ím → -ích).

Group A: hard masculine and neuter take -ech

This is the default for hard-stem masculine nouns (the hrad and pán types) and hard neuters (the město type). The ending is -ech, and it does not soften an ordinary consonant.

Bavili jsme se o starých hradech a zámcích.

We talked about old castles and châteaux.

V těch městech skoro nikdo nemluví anglicky.

In those towns almost nobody speaks English.

O našich sousedech bych radši nemluvil.

I'd rather not talk about our neighbours.

So: hrad → o hradech, most → na mostech, pán → o pánech, student → o studentech. A few hard masculines lean toward the soft -ích instead — most famously les → v lesích (in the woods) — but these are individual lexical quirks to absorb word by word, not a pattern. For now, take -ech as the reliable default whenever the stem ends in a plain (non-velar) hard consonant.

The velar trap: k, g, h, ch take -ích with softening

Here is where Czech ambushes you. Hard masculine nouns whose stem ends in a velar — k, g, h, ch — refuse the cluster -ech and take -ích instead, and the velar softens:

Stem ends in	Softens to	Example
k	c	vlak → o vlacích, kluk → o klucích
g	z	dialog → v dialozích
h	z	pstruh → o pstruzích, břeh → na březích
ch	š	Čech → o Češích, hroch → o hroších

Ve vlacích bývá v pátek narváno.

The trains are usually packed on Fridays.

O těch klucích z vedlejší třídy se hodně mluví.

People talk a lot about those boys from the next class.

Na obou březích řeky stojí staré mlýny.

There are old mills standing on both banks of the river.

This is the same k→c, h→z, ch→š softening you see in the masculine nominative plural and the locative singular, so it should feel familiar rather than arbitrary once you spot the pattern. Read more on the mechanism in locative endings and alternations.

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A colloquial variant exists: in informal Bohemian speech you may hear o klukách instead of o klucích, with the feminine-style -ách ending tacked onto a masculine noun. It is widespread in speech but counts as substandard in writing — use -ích when you write.

Group B: hard feminine takes -ách

The hard feminine type (žena) takes -ách with no softening. This is the easiest group: whatever the stem, you append -ách.

Po dlouhých procházkách v lese se vždycky cítím líp.

After long walks in the woods I always feel better.

O ženách v jeho rodině se vyprávějí legendy.

Legends are told about the women in his family.

Na horách napadl první sníh.

The first snow has fallen in the mountains.

Note na horách — hora (mountain) keeps -ách even though its stem ends in r; the feminine žena type never softens. Compare this with the velar masculines above, which do.

Group C: soft stems take -ích

Soft-stem nouns of every gender converge on -ích. This covers:

Soft masculine (muž, stroj types): muž → o mužích, stroj → na strojích, učitel → o učitelích.
Soft feminine (růže, píseň types): růže → o růžích, píseň → v písních, kuchyně → v kuchyních.
Soft neuter (moře, stavení types): moře → v mořích, stavení → o staveních.

O těch dvou mužích nikdo nic neví.

Nobody knows anything about those two men.

V písních Karla Kryla je spousta hořkosti.

There's a lot of bitterness in Karel Kryl's songs.

Strávili jsme léto na řeckých ostrovech v Egejském moři.

We spent the summer on Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

So the velar masculines (Group C by behaviour) and all the soft stems share the -ích ending — which is exactly why the triad table groups them together.

The -kost / -ost feminines: an -ech exception

Watch out for the kost type — abstract feminines ending in -ost/-est (radost, kost, čest). Despite being feminine, they take -ech, not -ách or -ích:

Mluvili jsme o jeho dobrých vlastnostech.

We talked about his good qualities.

Po těch zlých zprávách a starostech jsme potřebovali dovolenou.

After all that bad news and worry we needed a holiday.

So kost → o kostech, vlastnost → o vlastnostech, radost → v radostech. This is the one feminine sub-type that breaks the -ách rule, and it is worth memorising as a unit. See the feminine dat/loc alternations for the full kost paradigm.

Common Mistakes

❌ Ve vlakech bývá narváno.

Incorrect — velar-stem vlak cannot take -ech; k must soften to c before -ích.

✅ Ve vlacích bývá narváno.

The trains are usually packed.

❌ Bavili jsme se o starých hradích.

Incorrect — non-velar hard masculine hrad takes -ech, not -ích.

✅ Bavili jsme se o starých hradech.

We talked about old castles.

❌ Po dlouhých procházkech se cítím líp.

Incorrect — hard feminine procházka takes -ách, not -ech.

✅ Po dlouhých procházkách se cítím líp.

After long walks I feel better.

❌ Mluvili jsme o jeho dobrých vlastnostách.

Incorrect — the -ost feminine type takes -ech, not the expected feminine -ách.

✅ Mluvili jsme o jeho dobrých vlastnostech.

We talked about his good qualities.

❌ O Češech se říká, že milují pivo.

Incorrect — the stem-final ch of Čech must soften to š before -ích.

✅ O Češích se říká, že milují pivo.

They say Czechs love beer.

Key Takeaways

Three endings cover almost everything: -ech (hard masc/neut), -ách (hard fem), -ích (soft stems + velar masculines).
Predict the locative plural from the dative plural: -ům → -ech, -ám → -ách, -ím → -ích, same stem and same softening.
Hard masculines ending in k, g, h, ch jump to -ích and soften: vlak → vlacích, pstruh → pstruzích, Čech → Češích.
The -ost feminines (radost, vlastnost, kost) are the trap exception: they take -ech, not -ách.

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