Neuter: The Město Paradigm | Czech Grammar

The město ("town, city") paradigm is the hard neuter pattern, and it is the easiest of the three core hard declensions to get started with. It covers nearly every neuter noun ending in -o: auto (car), okno (window), kolo (bike/wheel), jablko (apple), slovo (word), pivo (beer), divadlo (theatre), letadlo (aeroplane), kino (cinema), maso (meat).

What makes neuter nouns friendly is that the nominative and accusative are always identical — in both the singular and the plural. A neuter noun looks the same whether it is the subject or the direct object, so you never have to recalculate the object form. What makes them feel exotic to an English speaker is the genitive plural, which has no ending at all — and the fill vowel that sometimes appears to make that bare stem pronounceable.

The full město paradigm

Here is město through all seven cases, singular and plural.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative (kdo? co?)	město	města
Genitive (koho? čeho?)	města	měst (zero ending)
Dative (komu? čemu?)	městu	městům
Accusative (koho? co?)	město (= nominative)	města (= nominative)
Vocative (oslovení)	město	města
Locative (o kom? o čem?)	(ve) městě	(ve) městech
Instrumental (kým? čím?)	městem	městy

There is a satisfying overlap to notice: the genitive singular and the whole nominative/accusative/vocative plural all share the ending -a (města). Only context and the surrounding words tell you whether města means "of the town" (one town, genitive) or "towns" (several, plural).

Nominative equals accusative

Because neuter nouns make no distinction between subject and object form, the direct object never changes. Whatever the noun looks like in the dictionary is what it looks like as an object.

Praha je krásné město.

Prague is a beautiful city. (město as predicate)

To město znám docela dobře.

I know that city pretty well. (město as object, identical to subject form)

Otevři okno, je tu strašné horko.

Open the window, it's terribly hot in here. (okno as object, unchanged)

Mám rád velká města, je v nich pořád něco k vidění.

I like big cities, there's always something to see in them. (města, accusative plural = nominative plural)

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Because nominative and accusative match in both numbers, neuter nouns are the only gender where you never have to recompute the object form. The price is the one ambiguity above: města is both "of the town" (genitive singular) and "towns" (nominative/accusative plural). Only the sentence around it disambiguates.

The genitive singular: -a

The genitive singular ends in -a (do města = into town, kus jablka = a piece of apple). English speakers coming from the masculine hrad pattern, which has genitive -u, must resist carrying that -u over to neuters. Neuters in -o take genitive singular -a, full stop.

Uprostřed města stojí stará radnice.

An old town hall stands in the middle of town. (město → města, genitive)

Dáš si kousek jablka?

Would you like a piece of apple? (jablko → jablka, genitive after kousek)

The zero genitive plural — and the fill vowel

Now the headline feature. The genitive plural of a hard neuter has no ending: you strip the -o and stop. "Of towns" is simply měst; "of words" is slov; "of beers" is piv.

Za rok jsme navštívili spoustu měst.

In a year we visited loads of towns. (město → měst, zero genitive plural after spousta)

Řekl jen pár slov a odešel.

He said just a few words and left. (slovo → slov, zero genitive plural)

This bare-stem genitive plural is not a curiosity you can ignore — it appears constantly, because Czech demands the genitive plural after quantity words like hodně (a lot of), málo (few), spousta (loads of), pár (a couple of), and after pět and every higher number.

When stripping the -o would leave an awkward consonant cluster, Czech slips in a fill vowel -e- to break it up. Okno does not become okn; it becomes oken. Jablko → jablek, divadlo → divadel, číslo → čísel, sklo → skel.

V košíku zbylo už jen pět jablek.

There were only five apples left in the basket. (jablko → jablek, fill vowel -e-)

V tomhle paneláku je hodně malých oken.

There are a lot of small windows in this block of flats. (okno → oken, fill vowel)

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The fill vowel is predictable: it appears only when the bare stem would end in a hard-to-say cluster (okn-, jablk-, divadl-). Simple stems like měst-, slov-, piv-, kol- need nothing — the genitive plural is just měst, slov, piv, kol. This is the very same zero genitive plural the feminine žena pattern has, so you are learning two genders' worth of it at once.

The locative singular: -ě / -e versus -u

Like the masculine hard pattern, the neuter locative singular splits. Most -o nouns take -ě/-e, which softens the preceding consonant (ve městě, na kole, v okně, v divadle). But foreign-origin neuters take -u (v rádiu, ve studiu); auto is heard with both v autě and v autu.

Bydlím ve městě, ne na vesnici.

I live in the city, not in a village. (město → městě, locative)

Nechal jsem mobil v autě.

I left my phone in the car. (auto → autě, locative)

Slyšel jsem to v rádiu dnes ráno.

I heard it on the radio this morning. (rádio → rádiu, foreign neuter takes -u)

The instrumental, by contrast, is reliably -em in the singular (autem = by car) and -y in the plural (městy).

Jeli jsme tam autem, vlakem by to trvalo věčnost.

We went there by car; by train it would have taken forever. (auto → autem, instrumental of means)

Common mistakes

❌ Navštívili jsme spoustu městů.

Incorrect — the hard neuter genitive plural has no ending; it is měst, never *městů.

✅ Navštívili jsme spoustu měst.

We visited loads of towns. (město → měst)

❌ V kuchyni je pět okn.

Incorrect — the bare stem okn- needs a fill vowel: oken.

✅ V kuchyni je pět oken.

There are five windows in the kitchen. (okno → oken)

❌ Uprostřed městu byl rynek.

Incorrect — the genitive singular of a neuter -o noun is -a, not the masculine -u.

✅ Uprostřed města bylo náměstí.

There was a square in the middle of town. (město → města, genitive)

❌ Bydlíme ve městu.

Incorrect — město takes the locative -ě, not -u; the -u option is for foreign neuters.

✅ Bydlíme ve městě.

We live in the city. (město → městě)

❌ Napsal jsem to bez jednoho slovu chyby.

Incorrect — the genitive singular of slovo is slova; -u belongs to the masculine pattern.

✅ Napsal jsem to bez jediného slova chyby.

I wrote it without a single word of error. (slovo → slova, genitive)

The two habits to break are both about the genitive: don't bolt the masculine -u onto the genitive singular (it's -a), and don't bolt -ů onto the genitive plural (it's the bare stem, with a fill vowel when needed).

Key takeaways

město is the model for hard neuter nouns in -o: auto, okno, kolo, jablko, slovo, pivo, divadlo.
Nominative = accusative in both numbers — the object form never changes: vidím město, vidím města.
Genitive singular is -a (města); genitive plural is the bare stem with no ending (měst), taking a fill vowel -e- where needed (oken, jablek, divadel). See the zero-ending genitive plural for the cross-gender pattern.
Locative singular splits -ě/-e (most nouns: městě, kole, okně) versus -u (foreign neuters: rádiu, studiu).
The genitive plural is everyday grammar — it follows every quantity word and every number from five up.

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