Likes and Dislikes: mít rád, líbit se, chutnat | Czech Grammar

English has one workhorse verb — "like" — for fancying a person, admiring a haircut, and enjoying a beer. Czech splits that single idea across three different verbs, and choosing the wrong one is one of the most recognisable giveaways of an English speaker. This page draws the lines between mít rád, líbit se, and chutnat, and explains the grammatical somersault that two of them perform: the thing you like becomes the subject, and you drop into the dative.

The core distinction in one breath

Verb	Use it for	Construction
mít rád	lasting fondness for people, things, activities	I (subject) + mít rád + accusative
líbit se	being pleased by how something looks / a first impression	thing (subject) + líbit se + me in dative
chutnat	liking the taste of food or drink	food (subject) + chutnat + me in dative

Think of it as deep liking (mít rád), liking the look (líbit se), and liking the taste (chutnat). The decision flowchart and edge cases live on the mít rád vs líbit se vs chutnat page; here we build the intuition.

Mít rád — settled, lasting fondness

Mít rád (literally "to have [someone/something] gladly") expresses a stable, established liking — your feelings about a city you know, animals in general, a friend, a hobby. The thing liked is a straightforward accusative direct object, and you are the ordinary subject, exactly as in English.

The catch is that rád is an adjective in disguise and must agree with the speaker's gender and number: rád (a man), ráda (a woman), rádi / rády (plural). This trips English speakers because nothing in "I like" changes with who is talking.

Mám rád Prahu, ale v létě je tam moc turistů.

I like Prague, but in summer there are too many tourists. (male speaker)

Mám ráda psy, ale kočky moc ne.

I like dogs, but not cats so much. (female speaker)

Máme rádi dlouhé procházky v lese.

We like long walks in the forest.

For people, mít rád also means "to be fond of / to care for"; turned up to full strength it becomes milovat "to love." Note the natural word order with a pronoun object — the clitic comes second: Mám tě rád "I love you / I'm fond of you."

Mám tě rád, to přece víš.

I'm fond of you — you know that. (male speaker)

Miluju Prahu na podzim, hlavně Petřín.

I love Prague in autumn, especially Petřín. (colloquial)

(Miluju is the everyday colloquial form; the textbook form is miluji.)

Líbit se — when something pleases you

Líbit se is where the grammar turns inside out. It does not mean "to like" but rather "to be pleasing" — so the thing is the subject and you are in the dative: Líbí se mi ten film is literally "the film pleases-itself to me." This is the dative experiencer construction, the same logic behind the verb's full government write-up on the líbit se as experiencer page.

Meaning-wise, líbit se is about appearance and first impressions — how something strikes you when you see or hear it: a film, a dress, a flat, a piece of music, a person you find attractive.

Líbí se mi tvoje nové brýle, kde jsi je koupila?

I like your new glasses — where did you buy them? (to a woman)

Ten byt se nám líbil, ale byl moc drahý.

We liked the flat, but it was too expensive.

Nelíbí se mi, jak se ke mně chová.

I don't like the way he treats me.

Because the thing is the grammatical subject, the verb agrees with it. With a single thing you get líbí se mi; the verb is third person throughout. The subtlety — and a genuinely useful insight — is that the present-tense forms for "it pleases" and "they please" happen to be identical (líbí covers both), so you only see the number agreement in the past tense:

Líbil se mi ten koncert.

I liked that concert. (singular: líbil)

Líbily se mi ty fotky z dovolené.

I liked those photos from the holiday. (plural: líbily)

Switch from the masculine koncert to the feminine plural fotky and the participle moves from líbil to líbily — proof that the liked thing, not the liker, is steering the verb.

Chutnat — liking a taste

For food and drink there is a dedicated verb: chutnat, "to taste good (to someone)." It runs on exactly the same dative-experiencer plumbing as líbit se — the food is the subject, you are in the dative — but it is reserved for the sense of taste.

Chutná mi pivo, hlavně to plzeňské.

I like beer, especially Pilsner.

Chutnají mi tvoje koláče, dáš mi recept?

I like your pastries — will you give me the recipe?

Here the number agreement is visible in the present, because chutnat conjugates differently from líbit se: singular chutná, plural chutnají. One pastry chutná, several chutnají. When a waiter clears your plate and asks Chutnalo vám? ("Did it taste good?"), the polite answer is Ano, moc, děkuju.

💡

Use the table-test: if you could say it with your mouth full at dinner, it's chutnat. If you'd say it looking at a photo or a shop window, it's líbit se. If it's a feeling you've held for years, it's mít rád.

Putting them side by side

The same English "I like..." splits cleanly once you ask what kind of liking:

Mám rád tu kavárnu.

I like that café. (I'm a regular; settled fondness)

Líbí se mi ta kavárna.

I like that café. (it looks lovely — first impression)

Chutná mi káva z té kavárny.

I like the coffee from that café. (the taste)

Common Mistakes

❌ Líbím ten film.

Incorrect — you are not the subject; the film pleases you, so it must be the subject and you go in the dative.

✅ Líbí se mi ten film.

I like that film.

❌ Líbí se mě ten obraz.

Incorrect — the experiencer is the dative mi, not the accusative/genitive mě.

✅ Líbí se mi ten obraz.

I like that painting.

❌ Chutná mi zmrzlinu.

Incorrect — with chutnat the food is the subject, so it stays in the nominative, not the accusative.

✅ Chutná mi zmrzlina.

I like ice cream.

❌ Mám ráda svého psa.

Wrong gender (said by a man — should be Mám rád): rád must agree with the male speaker.

✅ Mám rád svého psa.

I'm fond of my dog. (male speaker)

❌ Mám rád, jak dnes vypadáš.

Incorrect for a reaction to appearance — mít rád is lasting fondness, not an impression of how someone looks today.

✅ Líbí se mi, jak dnes vypadáš.

I like how you look today.

Key Takeaways

Three likings, three verbs: lasting fondness (mít rád
- accusative, you are the subject), being pleased by looks (líbit se
  - dative, the thing is the subject), liking a taste (chutnat
    - dative, the food is the subject).
With líbit se and chutnat the experiencer is in the dative (mi, ti, mu...), never the subject — this is the opposite of English word order.
The verb agrees with the liked thing: visibly in chutnat (chutná / chutnají) and in the past tense of líbit se (líbil / líbily).
Rád agrees with the speaker's gender — rád / ráda — and intensifies into milovat.
Watch mi (dative) versus mě (accusative/genitive): the experiencer is always mi.

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