Aspect with už and ještě (Already / Yet / Still)

Two tiny adverbs — už and ještě — carry a huge amount of meaning in Czech, and they lock tightly onto aspect. Už points at a change that has already happened or a new state that holds now; ještě points at a state that still continues or an event that is not yet here. Because completion is exactly what aspect encodes, už gravitates to the perfective (a completed result) and ještě to the imperfective (an ongoing state) — and the negatives flip in instructive ways. Once you see the grid, the English "already / yet / still" map onto it almost one-to-one.

už — "already / now": a completed result

Už signals that a threshold has been crossed: the thing is already done, or a new state is now in force. When už reports that an action has reached its result, it pairs with the perfective.

That third example shows the other face of už: with an imperfective it can mean "now / at this point," marking that a new phase has begun. But its anchor use — and the one to learn first — is už + perfective = "already / by now, done."

ještě — "still": an ongoing state

Ještě (often reinforced as ještě pořád or just pořád "still") says a state continues — it hasn't stopped yet. Continuation is the imperfective's home turf, so ještě pairs with the imperfective.

The negatives: ještě ne — "not yet" with the perfective

Here is where English-speaker intuition needs adjusting. "Not yet" in Czech is ještě ne-, and it attaches to the perfective — because "not yet" reports an awaited result that hasn't been reached. You are looking at the boundary the perfective supplies and saying it hasn't been hit.

Contrast this carefully with "I'm still doing it," which is a continuing process, not an awaited result — and so takes the imperfective, usually with pořád or ještě pořád:

The pair to burn in: Ještě jsem to neudělal = "I still haven't done it" (perfective, the result is still missing) versus Pořád to dělám = "I'm still doing it" (imperfective, the activity is ongoing). Same English word "still," two completely different Czech structures, because English "still" can describe either a missing result or a continuing process — and Czech forces you to say which.

už ne — "not anymore": the state has ended

The mirror image of ještě is už ne- "not anymore / no longer" — a state that used to hold has now stopped. Because you're describing the (now-absent) state, this typically uses the imperfective.

The four-cell grid

Almost every "already / yet / still / not anymore" sentence falls into one of these four cells. Memorize the grid and you've got the system.

Read the grid as two diagonals. The perfective cells (už / ještě ne-) are about whether a result has been reached. The imperfective cells (ještě / už ne-) are about whether a state still holds. English "already / yet" track the result diagonal; English "still / anymore" track the state diagonal — which is why they line up so neatly.

A note on word order

Už and ještě normally sit before the verb phrase, but they can also lead the sentence for emphasis. In the past tense, the auxiliary jsem/jsi still claims second position, so you'll see Už jsem to udělal, Ještě jsem nedojedl — the adverb first, then the clitic auxiliary right behind it. Don't let the adverb push the auxiliary out of its slot.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• už + perfective = "already / done by now."
• ještě ne- + perfective = "not yet" (an awaited result not reached).
• ještě (pořád) + imperfective = "still" (an ongoing state).
• už ne- + imperfective = "not anymore" (a state that ended).
• The split English "still" forces the key contrast: Ještě jsem to neudělal (still haven't — perfective result) vs. Pořád to dělám (still doing it — imperfective process). For more on the negation half, see aspect and negation.