Proverb: Mluviti stříbro, mlčeti zlato

Four words, two verbs, no verb you can conjugate, and a whiff of the nineteenth century in every syllable. Mluviti stříbro, mlčeti zlato — "to speak is silver, to be silent is gold" — is the Czech form of an old European proverb, and it is a small museum of elevated Czech. It shows you the archaic long infinitive in -ti that modern speech has otherwise abandoned, and it shows you how Czech can build a complete, balanced statement with no copula at all. We'll read it word by word, then take each feature in turn.

Word by word

The skeleton is two matched equations laid side by side: "to-speak — silver, to-be-silent — gold." No verb links the halves; the comma and the parallel do all the work.

Grammar in action 1: the archaic infinitive in -ti

The first thing an English speaker should register is that mluviti and mlčeti are infinitives ("to speak," "to be silent") — but not the infinitives you'll learn to say. Modern standard Czech ends the infinitive in -t: mluvit, mlčet, dělat, být. The forms here end in -ti, an older ending that has almost entirely fallen out of the spoken language.

The -ti ending is not wrong — it is (archaic) in ordinary speech but fully alive in a narrow band of registers: proverbs and set phrases, older literature, poetry, hymns, legal and biblical language, and any writer reaching for a solemn or old-fashioned tone. A Czech reader hears -ti the way an English reader hears thou speakest: instantly dated, instantly dignified.

There is also a third, even more archaic infinitive ending, -ci, on a handful of verbs — říci (to say, modern říct), moci (to be able, modern moct) — which you'll still meet in careful writing. The modern -t infinitive and its history are on the infinitive; its range of uses is on infinitive uses.

Grammar in action 2: an infinitive as a noun-like subject

Notice what these infinitives are doing. Mluviti ("to speak") is not commanding or completing another verb — it stands as the subject of its clause, a whole action treated as a thing that can be equated with silver. English does the same with the gerund or the to-infinitive: "speaking is silver," "to speak is silver." Czech lets the bare infinitive carry this nominal weight, and the elevated -ti form makes the abstraction feel weighty and aphoristic.

This subject-infinitive use is one of the patterns on infinitive uses.

Grammar in action 3: the missing copula

Now the structural heart of the proverb. Where is the verb "is"? There isn't one — and that is deliberate, not an ellipsis you must mentally repair. Spelled out in full, the thought would be Mluvit je stříbro, mlčet je zlato ("to speak is silver, to be silent is gold"), with the copula je ("is," 3rd person of být). The proverb drops both je's, leaving a bare subject — predicate noun collision: infinitive next to noun, with only the balance of the phrase to signal "equals."

Czech permits this verbless equation far more readily than English, especially in the compressed, timeless register of proverbs, headlines, definitions, and slogans. English can occasionally do it (More haste, less speed; Once bitten, twice shy), but Czech reaches for it as a native rhetorical move whenever it wants a statement to feel like a permanent truth rather than a report about right now.

The everyday copula je — the verb the proverb so pointedly omits — is on the present tense of být, and the way Czech asserts existence and identity is on existential sentences.

Grammar in action 4: the antithesis that makes it stick

The proverb is built on two crisp oppositions, and this symmetry is why it survives. Mluviti is set against mlčeti (speaking vs. keeping quiet), and stříbro against zlato (silver vs. gold). The parallel is exact — infinitive + neuter metal, twice — so the two halves rhyme structurally even though they don't rhyme in sound. And the ranking is the whole message: gold outranks silver, so silence outranks speech. Saying nothing is worth more than speaking; the wise choice, when in doubt, is to hold your tongue.

That both nouns are neuter (stříbro, zlato, like most metal names) is a quiet bonus of the parallelism — same gender, same ending -o, reinforcing the mirror.

Usage and culture

Czechs deploy this proverb almost exactly as English uses silence is golden — as advice to hold back, or as a dry comment when someone has said too much. It's the natural thing to murmur when a colleague is about to blurt out something unwise, or as gentle self-censorship: radši budu mlčet ("I'll keep quiet instead"). Because of its -ti forms it always carries a faintly bookish, sententious flavour, so it's often quoted with a knowing half-smile rather than delivered as literal counsel. Expressing this kind of measured opinion is part of the toolkit on emotions and opinions.

You'll also meet the playful inversion Mlčeti zlato, mluviti stříbro used ironically, and jokes that swap the order to argue the opposite — proof that the original wording is fixed enough for its subversion to land.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• -ti is the (archaic/literary) infinitive ending; modern Czech uses -t (mluvit, mlčet). Recognise -ti in proverbs and old texts; don't produce it in speech.
• The infinitives here act as noun-like subjects — "to speak," "to be silent" — equated with silver and gold.
• The proverb omits the copula je: spelled out it would be Mluvit je stříbro, mlčet je zlato. Verbless equation is a native Czech move for timeless, proverbial statements.
• The antithesis mluviti / mlčeti and stříbro / zlato carries the meaning: gold beats silver, so silence beats speech.