Money and Currency | Czech Grammar

Talking about money is one of the first things you actually need Czech for — at a shop, a pub, a ticket window. It is also a perfect, high-frequency drill in numeral agreement, because the word for the currency, koruna ("crown"), changes shape depending on the number in front of it. Get this pattern solid and you can read any price in the country.

The koruna pattern

The Czech currency is the koruna (crown), abbreviated Kč and written after the figure: 100 Kč, read aloud as sto korun. As a feminine noun, koruna follows the universal Czech counting rule that governs every counted noun:

Number	Form	Case	Example
1	koruna	nominative singular	jedna koruna
2, 3, 4	koruny	nominative plural	dvě / tři / čtyři koruny
5 and up	korun	genitive plural	pět / deset / sto korun

Mám u sebe jen dvě koruny.

I've only got two crowns on me.

Pivo tady stojí čtyřicet pět korun.

A beer here costs forty-five crowns.

Půjčil jsem mu tisíc korun.

I lent him a thousand crowns.

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The genitive plural korun is by far the form you will use most. Almost every real price is either a round number or ends in 5 or more — sto korun, dvě stě korun, devět set korun, tisíc korun — and all of those take korun. If in doubt at a counter, korun is the safe bet.

Asking and answering prices

The standard question is Kolik to stojí? ("How much does it cost?"). The verb stát ("to cost") takes the price in the accusative, which for koruna happens to look identical to the forms in the table above.

Kolik stojí to kafe? — Dvacet korun.

How much is that coffee? — Twenty crowns.

Ten svetr stál pět set korun.

That sweater cost five hundred crowns.

Ten bonbon stojí korunu.

That candy costs one crown.

That last one is worth a close look. After the verb stát, a one-crown price is the accusative singular korunu, not the nominative koruna. You are saying "it costs a crown," and the crown is the thing being paid — the object of stát. See the accusative of measure and price for the full logic.

"For X crowns": za + accusative

To say you bought, sold, or did something for a sum of money, use za + accusative. The number phrase goes into the accusative, which for korun-style sums again matches the counting forms.

Koupila jsem ten svetr za pět set korun.

I bought that sweater for five hundred crowns.

Za sto korun se tady ani nenajíš.

You can't even get a full meal here for a hundred crowns.

Prodal to auto za dvě stě tisíc.

He sold the car for two hundred thousand.

Quantified money takes a singular verb

When a sum of 5 or more is the subject of a sentence, the verb goes into the third-person singular neuter — not the plural. The quantity is treated as one lump, not as countable individual crowns. This is the same rule that governs pět lidí přišlo ("five people came").

Na účtu mi zbylo jen pět set korun.

I had only five hundred crowns left in my account.

Stálo to skoro deset tisíc korun.

It cost almost ten thousand crowns.

With the small numbers 2, 3, 4, though, the subject is a genuine plural and the verb agrees as plural: Zbyly mi tři koruny ("I had three crowns left," with the feminine plural zbyly). The split between "2–4 = plural verb" and "5+ = singular neuter verb" is one of the most characteristic features of Czech number agreement.

Compound prices ending in 1

Here is the genuinely tricky corner, and the textbooks disagree, so be honest with yourself about it. In a compound number like 121, the conservative rule is that the counted noun agrees with the last word of the number:

sto dvacet jedna koruna (121 — jedna governs, so nominative singular)
sto dvacet dvě koruny (122 — dvě governs, nominative plural)
sto dvacet pět korun (125 — pět governs, genitive plural)

In everyday speech, however — and increasingly in writing — Czechs often treat the whole compound as a quantifier and just say the genitive plural: sto dvacet jedna korun. Both are widely heard.

To kolo stálo sto dvacet jedna korun.

That bicycle cost a hundred and twenty-one crowns. (everyday usage)

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For prices you only need to understand, recognize both sto dvacet jedna koruna and sto dvacet jedna korun. For prices you need to produce, the colloquial korun after any compound number is the simplest reliable choice and will never sound wrong in conversation.

The haléř — and what survives of it

A koruna used to divide into a hundred haléřů (hellers). The haléř (older spelling halíř, now literary/historical) was withdrawn from circulation in 2008, so you will only meet it in old texts, on rounding lines of receipts, and in the set phrase do haléře ("down to the last penny"). It declines just like any masculine noun: jeden haléř, dva haléře, pět haléřů.

Vrátil mi všechno do haléře.

He paid me back down to the last heller.

The euro

When prices come in euros, the word euro is a regular neuter noun (it declines, contrary to a common belief that it is fixed): jedno euro, dvě eura, pět eur. Watch the genitive plural — it is eur, with no ending, and learners regularly leave the noun as euro instead.

Dvě eura jsou zhruba padesát korun.

Two euros is roughly fifty crowns.

Za pět eur si tady kafe nekoupíš.

You won't get a coffee here for five euros.

(One cent is jeden cent, dva centy, pět centů — the same three-way pattern.)

Colloquial money words

Spoken Czech is full of slang for money that you will hear immediately in the wild. (informal) throughout:

Slang	Means
kačka (pl. kačky, kaček)	a crown — playful word for koruna
stovka	a hundred-crown note / 100 Kč
litr	a thousand crowns / 1000 Kč
prachy	money, cash (general)

Nemáš u sebe náhodou stovku?

You don't happen to have a hundred on you?

Ta oprava mě stála dva litry.

That repair cost me two grand.

Common mistakes

❌ Stojí to dvě korun.

Incorrect — 2, 3, 4 take the nominative plural koruny, not the genitive.

✅ Stojí to dvě koruny.

It costs two crowns.

❌ Stojí to pět koruny.

Incorrect — 5 and up take the genitive plural korun.

✅ Stojí to pět korun.

It costs five crowns.

❌ To stojí jedna koruna.

Incorrect — a price after stát is accusative: jednu korunu / korunu.

✅ To stojí korunu.

It costs one crown.

❌ Stálo to deset euro.

Incorrect — euro declines; the genitive plural is eur.

✅ Stálo to deset eur.

It cost ten euros.

❌ Pět set korun zbyly na účtu.

Incorrect — a quantified 5+ subject takes a singular neuter verb.

✅ Pět set korun zbylo na účtu.

Five hundred crowns were left in the account.

Key takeaways

1 koruna · 2–4 koruny · 5+ korun — and korun is the workhorse form.
Prices after stát and after za sit in the accusative (which looks like the counting forms).
A sum of 5 or more as subject takes a singular neuter verb; 2–4 takes a plural verb.
euro declines like a neuter noun: dvě eura, pět eur — never deset euro.
The haléř is historical; recognize it, don't expect to spend it.

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