Neuter Paradigms Compared | Czech Grammar

Czech neuter nouns fall into just four declension patterns, and once you can tell them apart you have the whole gender under control. This page sets the four models — město (town), moře (sea), kuře (chick), stavení (building) — beside one another so you can see at a glance what they share and where they part ways. The good news first: neuters are the friendliest gender in Czech, because of one unifying rule that holds across all four patterns.

The one rule that unites all neuters

In a neuter noun, the nominative and the accusative are always identical — in the singular and the plural, in every one of the four patterns. A neuter noun looks the same whether it is the subject of a sentence or its direct object, so you never have to recompute the object form. After the masculine animate/inanimate split, where animacy decides whether the accusative changes, this is a holiday.

To město znám, ale tohle moře vidím poprvé.

I know that town, but I'm seeing this sea for the first time. (město and moře both unchanged as objects)

Koupili jsme to stavení i s kouskem pole.

We bought the farmhouse along with a bit of field. (stavení, pole — neuter objects, unchanged)

So the only real work in learning neuters is recognising which of the four patterns a given noun follows. That is decided almost entirely by its ending in the dictionary.

The decision rule: read the ending

Dictionary ending	Pattern	Example	Caveat
-o	město (hard)	okno, auto, slovo, jablko	none — the cleanest signal
-e / -ě	moře (soft)	pole, srdce, slunce, vejce	unless it is a young creature → kuře
-e / -ě (young animal)	kuře (stem-expanding)	kuře, tele, štěně, prase, zvíře	grows -et-/-at- in every oblique case
-í	stavení (near-invariable)	nádraží, náměstí, umění, psaní	almost never changes

The rule in one breath: ends in -o → město; ends in -í → stavení; ends in -e/-ě → moře, unless it names a young creature and expands its stem, in which case → kuře. The only judgement call is spotting the kuře animals, and they are a short, closed list (see the kuře paradigm).

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Of the four, stavení is by far the easiest (it barely changes), while město is the most important to drill first (it covers the largest number of everyday concrete nouns and its endings echo into the foreign -um neuters too). Learn město thoroughly, then read the other three as variations on it.

The diagnostic cells: three rows that tell them apart

You do not need to memorise four full fourteen-cell tables to keep the patterns straight. Three cells do almost all the diagnostic work: the genitive singular, the nominative plural, and the genitive plural. Here they are side by side.

	město	moře	kuře	stavení
Nominative sg.	město	moře	kuře	stavení
Genitive sg.	města	moře	kuřete	stavení
Nominative pl.	města	moře	kuřata	stavení
Genitive pl.	měst (zero)	moří	kuřat (zero)	stavení

Look at what each column is telling you:

město: the genitive singular and the nominative plural are the same word, města — a famous neuter ambiguity. The genitive plural is the bare stem, měst.
moře: four forms here are all just moře (nom sg, gen sg, nom pl); only the genitive plural breaks ranks with the soft -í, moří.
kuře: every oblique form has grown a syllable — kuřete in the singular, kuřata/kuřat in the plural. This stem expansion is the one neuter pattern that genuinely surprises learners.
stavení: the column is a single word repeated. Across nearly the whole paradigm, stavení does not change at all.

Uprostřed města stojí stará kašna.

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

Z toho moře fouká studený vítr.

A cold wind is blowing off that sea. (moře, genitive singular — identical to nominative)

Polévku dělám z celého kuřete.

I make the soup from a whole chicken. (kuře → kuřete, genitive singular with stem expansion)

Kousek od nádraží je dobrá kavárna.

There's a good café a short way from the station. (nádraží, genitive singular — unchanged)

The shared difficulty: the zero genitive plural

Two of the four patterns — město and kuře — share the feature English speakers find hardest in the entire Czech noun system: a genitive plural with no ending at all. "Of towns" is just měst; "of chicks" is just kuřat. There is nothing to add; you strip back to the stem and stop. (The soft moře avoids this with its -í ending, and stavení sidesteps it by not changing.)

This bare-stem genitive plural is not optional knowledge: Czech demands the genitive plural after every quantity word — hodně, málo, spousta, pár, několik — and after pět and all higher numbers. So you meet měst, slov, oken, kuřat daily. See the cross-gender zero genitive plural for the full treatment, including the fill vowel that okno → oken needs.

Za léto jsme projeli spoustu měst a vesnic.

Over the summer we drove through loads of towns and villages. (město → měst, zero genitive plural)

Na dvoře běhalo aspoň deset kuřat.

There were at least ten chicks running around the yard. (kuře → kuřat, zero genitive plural)

A note on agreement: -a is neuter, not feminine

The plural ending -a (města, kuřata, auta) looks identical to a feminine singular, and that resemblance traps English speakers into feminine agreement. But a neuter plural takes a neuter-plural participle, which also ends in -a — never the feminine -y: města vznikla, kuřata se vylíhla, auta stála. Read the gender of the noun, not the shape of the ending.

Ta stará města vznikla už ve středověku.

Those old towns arose back in the Middle Ages. (města + vznikla, neuter plural agreement in -a)

Common mistakes

❌ Vidím nové město, ale to moře vidím nové.

Incorrect framing — the point is both are unchanged: neuter accusative always equals nominative, so 'vidím město / vidím moře' need no special object form.

✅ Vidím to město i to moře poprvé.

I'm seeing both the town and the sea for the first time. (město, moře — accusative = nominative)

❌ Z kuře udělám polévku.

Incorrect — kuře is a stem-expanding neuter; the genitive must grow a syllable: z kuřete.

✅ Z kuřete udělám polévku.

I'll make soup from the chicken. (kuře → kuřete)

❌ Bydlíme blízko nádražího.

Incorrect — stavení-type -í neuters do not take case endings here; the genitive is the unchanged nádraží.

✅ Bydlíme blízko nádraží.

We live near the station. (nádraží — invariable)

❌ Koupili jsme spoustu jablk.

Incorrect — the bare neuter genitive plural needs a fill vowel here: jablek.

✅ Koupili jsme spoustu jablek.

We bought loads of apples. (jablko → jablek)

❌ Kuřata se vylíhly v noci.

Incorrect — kuřata is neuter plural, so the participle ends in -a, not the feminine -y.

✅ Kuřata se vylíhla v noci.

The chicks hatched during the night. (neuter plural agreement: vylíhla)

Key takeaways

All four neuter patterns share one rule: nominative = accusative, singular and plural. The object form never changes.
Read the ending to pick the pattern: -o → město; -í → stavení; -e/-ě → moře, unless it is a young animal → kuře.
The three diagnostic cells are the genitive singular (města / moře / kuřete / stavení), nominative plural (města / moře / kuřata / stavení), and genitive plural (měst / moří / kuřat / stavení).
město and kuře share the zero genitive plural (měst, kuřat); kuře alone expands its stem; stavení is essentially invariable.
Watch agreement: the plural -a is neuter, so verbs and adjectives take neuter-plural endings (města vznikla), never feminine ones.

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