Dialogue: Ordering in a Café

Ordering in a café is the single most useful sentence shape an A1 learner can own, and it quietly drills four big pieces of Czech grammar at once: the accusative that marks what you're ordering, the dative reflexive si that means "for myself," the perfective present used as a future ("I'll have"), and the conditional that turns a bald request into a polite one. This page reads a two-line café exchange slowly and pulls each of those threads.

The text

Zákazník: Dám si kávu a jeden zákusek, prosím. Zákazník: Chtěl bych ještě sklenici vody.

Two turns from the customer (zákazník): the order itself, then a polite add-on. Naturally translated: "I'll have a coffee and one cake, please. — I'd also like a glass of water."

Word by word

Line 1 — Dám si kávu a jeden zákusek, prosím.

• Dám — dát "to give," 1st person singular. It looks like a present tense, but dát is perfective, and a perfective "present" form always points to the future. Dám si therefore means "I will have," not "I am having." More on this below.
• si — the dative reflexive clitic: "for myself / to myself." Dát si literally is "to give oneself," idiomatically "to have (food/drink)." It sits in second position, right after the verb.
• kávu — káva "coffee," in the accusative because it is the direct object. Feminine -a swaps to -u: káva → kávu.
• a — "and."
• jeden — "one," masculine, agreeing with zákusek.
• zákusek — masculine inanimate noun "a (small) cake / dessert," in the accusative — which, for inanimate masculine nouns, looks identical to the dictionary form.
• prosím — "please" (literally "I beg/ask," from prosit). It also works as "here you are" and "you're welcome," as we'll see.

Line 2 — Chtěl bych ještě sklenici vody.

• Chtěl — the -l participle of chtít "to want," masculine singular. A male speaker says chtěl; a female speaker says chtěla.
• bych — the 1st-person-singular conditional auxiliary. Chtěl bych = "I would like." Bych is a clitic and sits in second position, hooked onto the participle.
• ještě — "still / also / in addition" — here "as well, on top of that."
• sklenici — sklenice "glass," in the accusative (the thing being ordered): soft feminine sklenice → sklenici.
• vody — voda "water," in the genitive: "a glass of water." This is the partitive genitive, covered below.

Grammar in action

The accusative marks what you order

Whatever you order is the direct object, so it goes into the accusative. The ending you hear depends on the noun's gender — this is the everyday payoff of the case system:

The rule of thumb worth memorising at the café counter: feminine -a nouns change to -u (kávu, vodu), while masculine inanimate and neuter nouns don't change at all (zákusek, čaj, pivo). The full treatment is on the accusative as direct object page.

Dám si — "I'll give myself," i.e. "I'll have"

Dám si is the workhorse of ordering, and it packs two surprises. First, the si is a dative reflexive — literally "to/for myself" — so the phrase is "I'll give myself a coffee." Czech treats having food and drink as giving it to oneself, and the si is obligatory: dám kávu would mean "I'll give a coffee (to someone)." See the dative reflexive si for the wider pattern.

Second, dát is perfective, so its present-looking form is actually a future: dám = "I will have." There is no separate "will" word here; the perfective verb form carries the future meaning by itself.

Chtěl bych — the polite conditional

You can order with a flat Dám si…, but to soften a request — especially to ask for something extra — Czech reaches for the conditional: Chtěl bych "I would like." It is built from the -l participle (chtěl/chtěla) plus the conditional clitic bych. The whole point is politeness: Chci kávu "I want a coffee" is blunt; Chtěl bych kávu "I'd like a coffee" is courteous, exactly the English contrast between "I want" and "I'd like."

Notice that the auxiliary changes with the person — bych, bys, bychom, byste — while the participle changes for gender and number. Both are second-position clitics. The polite requests and present conditional with bych pages go deeper.

Sklenici vody — the partitive genitive

When you measure out a portion of something — a glass of water, a cup of coffee, a kilo of apples — the substance goes into the genitive. So voda "water" becomes vody: sklenice vody, "a glass of water." This is the partitive genitive, and English signals it with "of"; Czech signals it with the genitive ending. The container itself (sklenici) still takes the accusative as the actual object you're ordering.

The partitive genitive gets its own full treatment on the partitive genitive page.

Prosím does three jobs

Prosím is the politeness Swiss-army knife. In the dialogue it means "please," tacked onto the order. But the very same word covers:

• please — Kávu, prosím. ("A coffee, please.")
• here you are — handed to you with your coffee by the waiter.
• you're welcome — the standard reply to děkuji ("thank you").

Usage note

In a real Czech café you will hear customers open with either the plain Dám si… (relaxed, completely normal) or the more deferential Chtěl/Chtěla bych…. Both are polite; the conditional is just a notch softer and is the safest choice with a waiter you don't know. Round it off with prosím, and when the bill comes ask Zaplatím "I'll pay" or Chtěl bych zaplatit "I'd like to pay." A male speaker says chtěl bych, a female speaker chtěla bych — the participle must match your own gender, a point English speakers routinely forget.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• What you order is a direct object → accusative: feminine -a → -u (kávu, vodu); masculine inanimate and neuter unchanged (zákusek, čaj, pivo).
• Dám si means "I'll have": si is the dative reflexive "for myself," and dám is a perfective form that already carries future meaning.
• Chtěl/Chtěla bych is the polite conditional "I'd like" — softer than the blunt chci; the participle matches the speaker's gender, the auxiliary (bych/bys/bychom/byste) the person.
• "A glass of water" uses the partitive genitive: sklenici vody, šálek kávy.
• Prosím covers please, here you are, and you're welcome all at once.