Text: A Weather Forecast

A weather forecast is a tiny but dense Czech text, and it teaches three things at once that English never forces together: the impersonal future (bude oblačno — "it will be cloudy," with no "it"), the numeral-genitive machinery (patnácti stupňů — fifteen of degrees, both words declined), and the clipped verbless register of notices, where the copula simply vanishes (vítr slabý, severní). Read it slowly once and you own a register you'll meet on every radio bulletin, weather app, and news ticker in the country.

The text

Zítra bude oblačno, odpoledne místy přeháňky. Teploty kolem patnácti stupňů. Vítr slabý, severní.

Naturally rendered: "Tomorrow it will be cloudy, with scattered showers in places in the afternoon. Temperatures around fifteen degrees. Wind light, from the north."

Word by word

Sentence 1 — Zítra bude oblačno, odpoledne místy přeháňky.

• Zítra — "tomorrow," a time adverb. It does the work of a future marker by itself.
• bude — 3rd person singular future of být ("to be"): "(it) will be." There is no subject — this is the impersonal "it will be," explained below.
• oblačno — "cloudy," and crucially not an adjective but a predicate adverb in the neuter -o form. It's the weather-state word that pairs with impersonal bude. Compare jasno (clear), zataženo (overcast), polojasno (partly cloudy).
• odpoledne — "in the afternoon," a time word.
• místy — "in places, locally." This is the instrumental plural of místo ("place"), frozen into an adverb: místo → místy.
• přeháňky — "showers," nominative plural of přeháňka ("a shower"). The verb is omitted — you supply budou ("there will be") yourself. Telegraphic style at work.

Sentence 2 — Teploty kolem patnácti stupňů.

• Teploty — "temperatures," nominative plural of teplota ("temperature"). Again the verb (budou) is dropped.
• kolem — "around, about, approximately," a preposition that governs the genitive.
• patnácti — "fifteen," but in the genitive form. Numerals from five up decline; patnáct in its base form becomes patnácti in the oblique cases — here because kolem demands the genitive.
• stupňů — genitive plural of stupeň ("degree"): stupeň → stupňů. After a numeral of five and above, the counted noun stands in the genitive plural — and kolem reinforces it.

Sentence 3 — Vítr slabý, severní.

• Vítr — "wind," masculine, nominative singular.
• slabý — "weak, light," a hard adjective (-ý) agreeing with masculine vítr. The copula bude/je is again deleted: "[the] wind [is] light."
• severní — "northern, from the north," a soft adjective (-í). Soft adjectives keep the same -í ending across genders, unlike slabý which would shift to slabá/slabé.

Grammar in action

Impersonal weather predicates: bude oblačno

English weather sentences need a dummy subject — "it is raining," "it will be cloudy." Czech throws that "it" away entirely. Weather and ambient states are subjectless: the verb sits in the 3rd person singular neuter, and the state is a predicate adverb ending in -o.

The tense lives entirely in být: je (present), bude (future), bylo (past, neuter to match the absent subject). This is the same subjectless logic that runs through impersonal constructions and impersonal subjectless sentences.

Numerals five-and-up: both the number and the noun decline

Kolem patnácti stupňů packs the whole Czech counting rule into three words. Two layers stack:

1. A numeral of five or more puts its noun in the genitive plural. Patnáct stupňů = "fifteen degrees," where stupňů is genitive plural (not the nominative stupně). This is the cliff that separates one-to-four (which agree normally) from five-and-up; see five and above with the genitive.
2. A preposition then declines the numeral itself. Kolem ("around") wants the genitive, so patnáct shifts to its genitive form patnácti. The base form would be wrong here — you cannot say kolem patnáct.

The wider principle — that any quantity word drags its noun into the genitive — is on the genitive after quantities.

The telegraphic register: dropping the verb

Forecasts, headlines, recipes, and notices share a clipped style that deletes the copula být. Vítr slabý, severní is understood as Vítr [bude] slabý [a] severní — "[the] wind [will be] light [and] northerly." The adjectives even follow the noun (vítr slabý, not the everyday slabý vítr), a faintly formal, listing word order typical of bulletins. This verb-dropping is one face of Czech's broader freedom to omit recoverable material, covered on pro-drop and ellipsis.

Spell the same forecast out in full speech and every gap fills back in:

Usage note

This clipped, verbless catalogue style is register-bound: it belongs to written and broadcast forecasts, news tickers, and notices, where space is tight and the reader supplies the obvious copula. (formal / written) In ordinary conversation you would never clip like this — you'd say Zítra bude pršet ("It'll rain tomorrow") with the verb intact. So read the telegraphic style fluently, but when you talk about the weather, put být back in and keep the natural slabý vítr order. One last sound-alike to file away: the noun počasí ("weather") is what a forecast is about, while the verbs of the sky — prší (it's raining), sněží (it's snowing) — are themselves impersonal, subjectless, and three-letter-ending in the same -í you'll keep meeting.

Key Takeaways

• Weather is impersonal: 3rd-person být
  • an -o predicate adverb, with no subject — je jasno, bude oblačno, bylo zataženo.
• Numerals five-and-up force the genitive plural on their noun (patnáct stupňů), and a preposition then declines the numeral itself (kolem patnácti).
• Místy is a frozen instrumental-plural adverb ("in places"); kolem
  • genitive means "around / approximately."
• The forecast register drops the copula and post-poses adjectives (vítr slabý, severní) — read it that way, but speak in full sentences.
• Soft adjectives like severní keep one -í form across genders; hard slabý would change to slabá / slabé.