Existential Sentences: 'there is / there isn't' | Czech Grammar

English announces existence with a dummy word: "there is a book," "there are people." Czech has nothing of the kind. It simply uses být ("to be") and lets word order do the work. This sounds easy — until you negate it, because the negative existential brings two surprises: the verb must agree with a thing that is precisely not there, and a handful of mass and abstract nouns keep an old genitive of negation alive. This page shows you how to say "there is," "there are," "there was," and especially "there isn't / there aren't," and how to avoid the two traps that catch every English speaker.

There is no "there"

The first thing to unlearn is the word "there." In "there is a book on the table," English "there" is an empty placeholder — it does not point to a location (the real location is "on the table"). Czech omits it entirely. The sentence becomes simply On the table is a book: the setting comes first, then je, then the thing that exists, in the nominative.

Na stole je kniha.

There's a book on the table.

V parku jsou děti.

There are children in the park.

V lednici je mléko.

There's milk in the fridge.

Notice the pattern: setting → být → existing thing (nominative). The book, the children, the milk are all in the nominative case, because grammatically they are the subject of být. There is no separate "there is" construction at all — it is just "to be" used to assert existence.

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Translate "there is / there are" as plain je / jsou. The English "there" disappears completely. If you find yourself writing tam je for every "there is," you are translating the placeholder by mistake.

Why the setting comes first

Czech word order is driven by information structure: known or background information (the topic) comes first, and new or emphasized information (the focus) comes last. In an existential sentence the setting is the background ("as for the table…") and the thing that exists is the news ("…there's a book"). So the natural order puts the location first and the existing thing in final, focus position.

V Praze je hodně turistů.

There are a lot of tourists in Prague.

Na náměstí byla spousta lidí.

There was a huge crowd in the square.

If you flipped this to Kniha je na stole, you would no longer be announcing existence — you would be locating a known book: "The book is on the table" (answering "where is the book?"). Same verb, opposite job. That is the existential-versus-locative distinction.

Existential vs. locative být

The same verb být does two different things, and word order tells them apart:

Function	Order	Example	Answers
Existential ("there is")	setting → je → thing	Na stole je kniha.	What's on the table?
Locative ("X is at…")	thing → je → place	Kniha je na stole.	Where's the book?

V kuchyni je někdo.

There's someone in the kitchen.

Ten člověk je v kuchyni.

That person is in the kitchen.

The first introduces an unknown someone (existential, focus at the end). The second tells you where a known person is (locative). English usually needs two different sentence shapes; Czech only reorders the same words.

Asking "is there…?"

Questions work the same way — keep the setting first and the existing thing last, and let intonation (or context) mark the question.

Je tady někdo?

Is anyone here?

Je v okolí dobrá restaurace?

Is there a good restaurant nearby?

Jsou tu nějaké volné židle?

Are there any free chairs here?

Past existential: byl / byla / bylo + nominative

For the past, být takes its l-participle, which agrees in gender and number with the existing thing (the nominative subject): byl (masc.), byla (fem.), bylo (neut.), and in the plural byli / byly / byla.

Na zahradě byl velký strom.

There was a big tree in the garden.

Včera tu byla spousta lidí.

There were loads of people here yesterday.

Na obloze bylo plno hvězd.

There were lots of stars in the sky.

Note the neuter agreement in bylo plno hvězd — quantity words like plno, hodně, spousta, and málo are treated as neuter singular when they head the subject, so the participle is bylo, not byly, even though stars are plural. (A neuter-plural l-participle would itself end in -a, as in města byla velká — "the towns were big" — but that is true plural agreement, not the quantity-word case.)

The negative existential: není / nejsou + nominative

To negate existence — "there is no…, there isn't any…" — Czech negates být: není ("there isn't"), nejsou ("there aren't"), nebyl / nebyla / nebylo ("there wasn't"). The everyday standard keeps the thing that fails to exist in the nominative, exactly as the positive existential does — the verb simply flips to negative.

V lednici není mléko.

There's no milk in the fridge.

Na stole není kniha.

There's no book on the table.

Doma nejsou žádné brambory.

There aren't any potatoes at home.

In Doma nejsou žádné brambory, the negated verb is plural (nejsou) and žádné brambory is the nominative plural subject — the negation lives on the verb, not in a case shift on the noun. (Žádný "no, none" forces the verb negative; see the ni-words page.)

The genitive-of-negation pocket

There is one famous twist with no English parallel — but it is much narrower than older textbooks suggest. With a small set of abstract and mass nouns, the non-existent thing can take the genitive of negation (genitiv záporový) instead of the nominative. This survives mainly in fixed or elevated phrasing: Není času ("there's no time"), Není peněz ("there's no money"), Není divu ("no wonder"), Není pochyb ("there's no doubt").

Na to není čas.

There's no time for that.

Není divu, že je unavený.

No wonder he's tired.

For a learner the safe rule is: use the nominative (Není čas, Nejsou peníze) — it is fully standard and natural. The genitive (Není času, Není peněz) is correct too but reads as bookish or set-phrase Czech; once productive across the board, it has retreated to these pockets in the modern language.

The negative pronouns: nic, nikdo + není

The negative existential is everywhere with nikdo ("nobody") and nic ("nothing"), each of which forces the verb to be negated.

Není tu nikdo.

There's nobody here.

V lednici nic není.

There's nothing in the fridge.

Nejsou peníze.

There's no money. / We have no money.

Note V lednici nic není rather than V lednici je nic — the verb must be negative whenever a negative word like nic appears. This is Czech's obligatory negative concord, covered fully on the ni-words page and the multiple-negation page.

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The everyday rule is simple: keep the existing thing in the nominative and just make the verb negative (není / nejsou / nebylo). The old genitive of negation is no longer the default — it lingers only with a few abstract/mass nouns and set phrases (Není času, Není divu). When in doubt, use the nominative: Není mléko, Nejsou peníze are both fully standard.

For the full mechanics see the genitive of negation and its case page.

"Mám / nemám" — the possessive twist

Closely related, English "I have no time" is often the same idea as "there's no time." Czech uses mít ("to have"), and here too the everyday standard simply negates the verb and leaves the object in the accusative:

Nemám čas.

I don't have time. / I have no time.

Nemáme doma nic k jídlu.

We've got nothing to eat at home.

So the two phrasings line up neatly: Není čas ("there's no time") and Nemám čas ("I have no time") both pin the negation on the verb. (The old genitive object Nemám času exists but, like the existential Není času, now sounds literary; the accusative Nemám čas is the natural choice.)

A storytelling fixed phrase

Czech fairy tales open with a frozen existential formula worth recognizing:

Byl jednou jeden král.

Once upon a time there was a king.

Literally "Was once one king" — the setting (jednou, "once") fronts, the existing king lands last, and byl agrees with the masculine král. This is the textbook existential shape, preserved as an idiom.

Common mistakes

❌ Tam je kniha na stole.

Incorrect when you mean plain 'there is' — tam wrongly inserts 'there'.

✅ Na stole je kniha.

There's a book on the table.

There is no dummy "there"; tam means the real adverb "there/over there" and should not stand in for the English placeholder.

❌ V lednici je nic.

Incorrect — positive verb with the negative word nic.

✅ V lednici nic není.

There's nothing in the fridge.

Any negative word (nic, nikdo, nikde) forces a negated verb — here není, not je.

❌ Není mléko v lednici, je tu jenom voda.

Unnatural order — fronting the bare verb buries the setting.

✅ V lednici není mléko.

There's no milk in the fridge.

The case is fine either way — mléko stays nominative under the negated není. The slip here is order: put the setting (v lednici) first, then the negated existential, just as in the positive version.

❌ Na náměstí byly spousta lidí.

Incorrect — wrong agreement after a quantity word.

✅ Na náměstí byla spousta lidí.

There was a big crowd in the square.

The quantity word spousta heads the subject as a feminine singular, so the participle is byla, not the plural byly.

❌ Nemám čas na to dnes večer.

Awkward order — the words are fine but the placement is unnatural.

✅ Dnes večer na to nemám čas.

I don't have time for that tonight.

The negation of mít is correct, but Czech prefers the time and the prepositional object before the verb in natural speech.

Key takeaways

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Three rules cover almost every existential sentence: (1) drop English "there" — use bare je / jsou; (2) front the setting, put the existing thing last in the nominative; (3) under negation, just switch the verb to není / nejsou — keep the thing in the nominative. Reserve the genitive of negation (Není času, Není divu) for the few abstract nouns and set phrases where it still lives.

This construction is closely tied to Czech's broader habit of subjectless and impersonal sentences — see impersonal and subjectless sentences and impersonal constructions — and to the word-order overview, which explains the topic-focus logic behind putting the setting first.

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