Describing what someone looks like is one of the most rewarding A2 skills because it makes you use the adjective system rather than just memorise it. Every description in Czech is an exercise in agreement — the adjective bends to match the noun's gender, number, and case — and once that clicks, "she has long brown hair and green eyes" stops being a vocabulary list and becomes grammar you can generate on the fly.
Two ways to describe a person
Czech splits description into two patterns:
- být + adjective for what someone is: tall, pretty, kind. The adjective agrees with the subject.
- mít + accusative for what someone has: blue eyes, long hair, a beard. The feature is a direct object, so it goes in the accusative.
Je vysoká a štíhlá.
She's tall and slim. (být + adjective)
Má dlouhé hnědé vlasy.
She has long brown hair. (mít + accusative)
Hold on to this division — it decides which case your adjectives land in.
být + adjective: agreeing with the subject
After být "to be," the adjective describes the subject and must match its gender and number. The hard-adjective endings (the mladý "young" type) look like this in the singular:
| Subject | Ending | Example |
|---|---|---|
| masculine (on) | -ý | Je vysoký. |
| feminine (ona) | -á | Je vysoká. |
| neuter (ono) | -é | Je vysoké. |
So the same English sentence "they're tall" splits by gender in Czech, and you must pick the ending that matches the person:
Petr je vysoký a hubený.
Petr is tall and thin. (masculine)
Eva je malá a veselá.
Eva is short and cheerful. (feminine)
This is where English speakers slip: English adjectives never change, so it feels strange that hezký "good-looking" becomes hezká about a woman. But getting the ending wrong is a real grammatical error in Czech, as audible as saying "she are" in English. The systematic paradigm is on hard adjectives (mladý); the agreement principle itself on adjective agreement.
Character traits, same rule
Personality words follow exactly the same agreement:
Je moc milý a chytrý, ale trochu líný.
He's very nice and smart, but a bit lazy. (masculine)
Naše učitelka je přísná, ale spravedlivá.
Our teacher is strict but fair. (feminine)
mít + accusative: features people have
For physical features, Czech says you have them, and the feature phrase becomes the direct object of mít "to have" — so it sits in the accusative. The adjective inside that phrase must show accusative endings too.
The good news for hair and eyes: vlasy "hair" is masculine inanimate plural and oči "eyes" is neuter plural, and for both of those the accusative plural looks identical to the nominative plural, ending in -é:
Má krátké tmavé vlasy.
He has short dark hair.
Má velké modré oči.
She has big blue eyes.
Babička má krásné bílé vlasy.
Grandma has lovely white hair.
Where the accusative really shows its colours is the feminine singular, whose adjective ending swaps to -ou and whose noun ending swaps to -u:
Má hezkou tvář a milý úsměv.
She has a pretty face and a kind smile.
Můj bratr má krásnou ženu.
My brother has a beautiful wife.
In hezkou tvář, both the adjective (hezká → hezkou) and the noun (tvář stays, soft feminine) are accusative; in krásnou ženu, you can see both endings move (krásná → krásnou, žena → ženu). That visible shift is the case system doing its job. Some features come without an adjective at all — Má vousy "He has a beard," Nosí brýle "He wears glasses" — but the accusative is still there.
Nosí brýle a má krátké vousy.
He wears glasses and has a short beard.
The verb itself is covered in full on the verb reference for mít.
Comparing people
Description naturally reaches for comparison — taller, prettier, the oldest. Czech builds the comparative with a single ending (usually -ší or -ejší), not with a separate word like English "more":
| Base | Comparative | Superlative |
|---|---|---|
| vysoký (tall) | vyšší | nejvyšší |
| hezký (pretty) | hezčí | nejhezčí |
| mladý (young) | mladší | nejmladší |
| starý (old) | starší | nejstarší |
| malý (small) | menší | nejmenší |
"Than" is než, and the thing compared stays in the nominative:
Můj bratr je vyšší než já.
My brother is taller than me.
Je to nejhezčí holka ve třídě.
She's the prettiest girl in the class.
The superlative simply prefixes nej- to the comparative: vyšší → nejvyšší, hezčí → nejhezčí. English speakers reliably try to say víc vysoký "more tall" — resist it; Czech uses the one-word vyšší. The mechanics live on forming the comparative and the superlative.
Common Mistakes
❌ Má dlouhý vlasy.
Incorrect — 'vlasy' is plural, so the adjective must be plural: dlouhé vlasy.
✅ Má dlouhé vlasy.
She has long hair.
❌ Je hezký.
Wrong gender when describing a woman — the adjective must be feminine: hezká.
✅ Je hezká.
She's good-looking.
❌ Má modrý oči.
Incorrect — 'oči' is neuter plural; the adjective agrees as modré.
✅ Má modré oči.
She has blue eyes.
❌ Má krásná žena.
Wrong case — a feature after 'mít' is a direct object and goes in the accusative: krásnou ženu.
✅ Má krásnou ženu.
He has a beautiful wife.
❌ Je víc vysoký než Petr.
Incorrect — Czech uses the one-word comparative vyšší, not 'víc' + adjective.
✅ Je vyšší než Petr.
He's taller than Petr.
Key Takeaways
- Describe what someone is with být
- adjective (agreeing with the subject): Je vysoká, Je milý.
- Describe what someone has with mít
- accusative: Má dlouhé vlasy, Má modré oči.
- Adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case — pick the ending from the noun, not from English.
- Hair and eyes (vlasy, oči) take -é in the accusative plural; feminine-singular features swap to -ou (hezkou tvář, krásnou ženu).
- Compare with the one-word comparative (vyšší, hezčí) plus než "than," and the superlative with nej- (nejhezčí).
Now practice Czech
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Start learning Czech→Related Topics
- Adjective–Noun AgreementA2 — Every Czech adjective copies its noun's gender, number, and case — so the same adjective wears a different ending in nearly every phrase, and getting the noun right but the adjective wrong is still an error.
- Forming the Comparative: -ější, -ší, -číA2 — Czech builds comparatives with one of three suffixes — productive -ější, common -ší, and a small -čí set — often triggering a consonant change, and the result declines as a soft adjective.
- The Superlative: the nej- PrefixB1 — Building superlatives by adding nej- to the comparative (nejrychlejší).
- Hard Adjectives: the -ý/-á/-é PatternA2 — The largest Czech adjective class — model mladý — agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case, with the long vowels -ého, -ému, -ým as its signature.
- mít — to haveA1 — Full conjugation of mít (to have), its accusative object, the obligation construction mít + infinitive, and the everyday idioms mít se and mít rád.