čekat / počkat — to wait

"To wait" is the aspect pair čekat / počkat. The imperfective čekat is waiting as an ongoing activity ("I'm waiting for the bus," "we waited an hour"); the perfective počkat packages the waiting as a single bounded act, which is why its imperative — Počkej! ("Wait!") — is one of the first things you'll need on the street. Both are perfectly regular Class V (-á-) verbs, so the conjugation gives no trouble. The two things to nail down are the preposition (na + accusative for what you wait for) and the second meaning, "to expect," which drops the na.

The two halves, side by side

Past tense: čekal / čekala / čekalo / čekali / čekaly / čekala and počkal / počkala …. Imperative: imperfective čekej / čekejte, perfective počkej / počkejte.

What the verb governs: na + accusative

The thing or person you wait for is expressed with na + accusative. There is no bare-object "wait something."

na tebe is na + accusative ("for you"). Note also the tense: Czech uses the present čekám where English uses "have been waiting," because the waiting is still going on.

The perfective imperative počkej na mě is the standard "wait for me" — one bounded act of waiting, with na mě (na + accusative) for the person.

The other meaning: čekat = to expect

There is a second, transitive use where čekat means "to expect," and here it takes a bare accusative with no na. This is the construction for expecting guests, expecting a delivery — and, idiomatically, for expecting a baby.

Here dítě is a bare accusative object — no na. There is a clean logic to the two patterns: when you sit and wait for something to arrive, it is na + accusative; when you expect (anticipate) something as a fact about the future, it is a bare accusative.

In this very common idiom the thing expected is the grammatical subject (dlouhý den) and the people are the accusative object (nás) — literally "a long day awaits us." You'll meet it constantly in forecasts and plans: Co nás dnes čeká? ("What's in store for us today?").

dočkat se — to finally get, to live to see

The prefixed perfective dočkat se (with obligatory se) means "to finally get something one has been waiting for, to live to see it." It governs the genitive, putting it among the genitive-governing verbs.

jara is the genitive of jaro ("spring"). The negated form gives the everyday expression of impatience:

Note that "I can't wait" in this excited sense is nemůžu se dočkat (+ genitive), not nemůžu čekat (which would literally mean you are unable to wait). This is a fixed idiom worth memorizing whole.

Common mistakes

To wait for somebody or something, you must use na + accusative. A bare object is wrong in the "waiting" sense.

In the "expect" meaning, čekat takes a bare accusative with no preposition. Počkám na dítě would mean "I'll wait for the child (to come)."

For a single, bounded "wait for me," the natural choice is the perfective počkej. The imperfective čekej sounds like "keep waiting / stay waiting," which is occasionally what you mean — but not here.

The enthusiastic "I can't wait!" is nemůžu se dočkat + genitive (Vánoc), not a literal "I'm unable to wait."

Key takeaways

• čekat = imperfective (waiting in progress, waiting a while); počkat = perfective (one bounded act of waiting). Both are regular -á- verbs.
• Waiting for something = na
  • accusative: Čekám na autobus. Drill the chunk čekat na.
• The perfective imperative Počkej! ("Wait!") is everyday survival language.
• čekat also means "to expect," and then it takes a bare accusative: Čekáme hosty. Čeká nás těžký týden.
• dočkat se
  • genitive = "to finally get / live to see"; nemůžu se dočkat
    • genitive = "I can't wait!"