Text: A Restaurant Menu

A Czech menu is grammar in its most compressed form. There are no verbs, almost no full sentences — just a noun and the things attached to it. And it's precisely those attachments that do the work: a soup is linked to its ingredient with one case, a main dish to its side with another, a sauce with a third. Read four short lines slowly and you'll meet the genitive of source, the instrumental of accompaniment, na + locative for "in a sauce," and the way a noun reshapes itself after a price. This is some of the most useful declension you'll ever practise, because you'll read it every time you eat out.

The text

Polévka z hub. Smažený sýr s hranolky. Svíčková na smetaně. Pivo 0,5 l — 45 Kč.

A typical lunch board: "Mushroom soup. Fried cheese with fries. Sirloin in cream sauce. Beer 0.5 l — 45 crowns." Notice how each dish is one head-noun (polévka, sýr, svíčková, pivo) plus a little case-marked tail that tells you what's in it or what comes with it.

Word by word

Grammar in action 1: z hub — the genitive of source

The preposition z ("from, out of") governs the genitive, and on a menu it names what a dish is made of. Polévka z hub is literally "soup out of mushrooms" — a mushroom soup. English would normally turn the ingredient into an adjective ("mushroom soup"); Czech can do that too (houbová polévka), but the z + genitive pattern is everywhere on menus because it's so transparent: the dish, then z, then the raw material in the genitive.

The catch for English speakers is the form hub. The dictionary word is houba ("a mushroom"), a feminine žena-type noun. To say "of mushrooms" you need the genitive plural, and for these feminine nouns the genitive plural has a bare, zero ending — plus a vowel shortening that trips everyone up: the diphthong ou collapses to u. So houba → hub.

The full range of prepositions that take the genitive — z, do, od, bez, u, vedle and more — is on the genitive after prepositions page.

Grammar in action 2: s hranolky — the instrumental of accompaniment

The very next dish swaps cases. Smažený sýr s hranolky — fried cheese with fries — uses the preposition s ("with"), and s governs the instrumental. This is the case of accompaniment: the thing that comes alongside the main item. On a menu it's the side dish, the garnish, the thing served with.

Hranolky ("fries / chips") is normally used in the plural, and the instrumental plural of these hard masculine nouns ends in -y, identical-looking to the nominative plural — so s hranolky. The pattern repeats all over the menu:

The wider use of s and the instrumental is covered on s + instrumental (accompaniment).

Grammar in action 3: smažený — a participle wearing an adjective's clothes

Smažený ("fried") started life as a verb — the past passive participle of smažit "to fry" — but on the menu it behaves as a plain adjective, and like every Czech adjective it must agree with its noun in gender, number, and case. Sýr is masculine, so we get the masculine ending: smažený sýr. Change the noun and the ending re-dresses:

Grammar in action 4: na smetaně — the locative of "in a sauce"

The national dish svíčková na smetaně drops a third case on us. Here the preposition na ("on, in") combines with the locative to describe the medium the dish sits in — its sauce. Smetana ("cream") is feminine, and its locative singular is smetaně. So na smetaně = "in cream (sauce)."

This na + locative frame is the standard way Czech names a sauce or a cooking style: na česneku (in garlic), na houbách (in mushrooms), na kyselo (in a sour sauce). Note that the very same word na can also take the accusative when there's motion onto something — but a dish that simply sits in its sauce is a static state, so it's locative.

The locative after na and v is laid out on the v and na for location page.

Grammar in action 5: the price — 45 Kč and counting nouns

The last line, Pivo 0,5 l — 45 Kč, hides two small but very Czech facts. First, the decimal point is a comma: 0,5 l is read nula celá pět litru, or in everyday speech simply půl litru ("half a litre"). Second, the abbreviation Kč stands for koruna česká ("Czech crown"), and when you read a price aloud the currency word slots into whatever case the number demands.

After numbers 5 and above (and any compound ending in 5–9 or 0, plus 11–19), the counted noun goes into the genitive plural. Koruna is feminine, its genitive plural is korun, so 45 Kč is read čtyřicet pět korun — and Kč itself unpacks as korun českých. This is why the noun after a price keeps "changing": it isn't random, it's the number governing the case.

The rule that 5-and-up forces the genitive plural is the subject of five and up takes the genitive.

A note on the dish — and the register

Svíčková (na smetaně) is the closest thing Czech cuisine has to a national dish: beef sirloin in a velvety sauce of puréed root vegetables and cream, served with bread dumplings (houskové knedlíky), a spoon of cranberries, a slice of lemon, and often a dollop of whipped cream. The word svíčková is grammatically an adjective turned noun (from svíčková pečeně, "candle/tenderloin roast"), which is why it declines like an adjective — svíčkovou in the accusative when you order it.

Menu language itself is a register: telegraphic, almost verbless, leaning entirely on nouns and their case-marked tails. That's exactly what makes a menu such a good A2 reader — strip away the verbs and the case system stands fully exposed.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• z + genitive = what a dish is made of: polévka z hub (note houba → hub, with ou → u in the zero-ending genitive plural).
• s + instrumental = what a dish is served with: s hranolky, s knedlíkem, s rýží.
• A participle like smažený is a full adjective and must agree: smažený sýr, smažená cibule, smažené kuře.
• na + locative names the sauce a dish sits in: na smetaně, na česneku, na paprice.
• After a price, the noun follows the number: 5 and up → genitive plural, so 45 Kč = čtyřicet pět korun.