Gender and Number Agreement of the l-Participle | Czech Grammar

The Czech past tense is built from the l-participle (dělal, přišel, byl) plus, in the first and second persons, an auxiliary form of být. Forming the participle is one thing; making it agree is another. Unlike an English past tense, which never changes — I worked, she worked, they worked — the Czech participle takes a different ending depending on the gender and number of the subject. Getting this agreement right is not optional politeness; the wrong ending is a grammatical error, and in the first person it can even tell your listener the wrong thing about who you are.

The six endings

The participle agrees with the subject across three genders in the singular and three in the plural. The endings are short and consistent.

Subject	Ending	dělat →	přijít →
masculine singular	-l	dělal	přišel
feminine singular	-la	dělala	přišla
neuter singular	-lo	dělalo	přišlo
masculine animate plural	-li	dělali	přišli
feminine plural / masc. inanimate plural	-ly	dělaly	přišly
neuter plural	-la	dělala	přišla

Petr přišel pozdě a ani se neomluvil.

Petr arrived late and didn't even apologise. (masculine singular -l)

Eva přišla včas, jako vždycky.

Eva arrived on time, as always. (feminine singular -la)

Auto nestartovalo, tak jsme jeli tramvají.

The car wouldn't start, so we went by tram. (neuter singular -lo, auto)

The plural splits by animacy

In the plural, the ending depends not just on gender but on animacy. The masculine animate plural — men, boys, and any group of people treated as masculine — takes -li. Everything else in the plural takes -ly, except all-neuter subjects, which take -la. This is the same animacy logic that runs through the whole noun system: living masculine beings behave differently from everything else.

Subject	Gender / animacy	Past form
studenti (students, m.)	masc. animate	studenti přišli
ženy (women)	feminine	ženy přišly
vlaky (trains, m.)	masc. inanimate	vlaky přijely
auta (cars, n.)	neuter	auta přijela

Studenti přišli na přednášku překvapivě připravení.

The students came to the lecture surprisingly well prepared. (masc. animate -li)

Holky přišly pozdě, zdržely se v obchodě.

The girls came late, they got held up in a shop. (feminine -ly)

Vlaky dnes přijely všechny na čas.

The trains all arrived on time today. (masc. inanimate -ly)

💡

Notice the word děti ("children"): even though it may include boys, it is grammatically feminine, so it takes -ly — Děti přišly. Agreement follows the grammatical gender of the subject noun, not the real-world sex of the people in it.

Děti přišly domů celé promočené.

The children came home soaking wet. (děti is feminine → -ly)

The -li / -ly trap is silent

Here is a genuinely hard point that even native writers stumble on. In Czech, the letters i and y are pronounced identically. That means přišli (masc. animate) and přišly (feminine / masc. inanimate) sound exactly the same out loud — the distinction lives only in writing, and it is decided entirely by the gender and animacy of the subject. You can speak for years without ever revealing whether you "know" this rule; the moment you write, it is exposed.

Kluci se celé odpoledne smáli.

The boys laughed all afternoon. (kluci, masc. animate → -li)

Ty staré fotky se někam ztratily.

Those old photos got lost somewhere. (fotky, feminine → -ly)

You mark your own gender in the first person

This is where Czech does something English has no equivalent for. Because the participle agrees with the subject, and in the first person the subject is you, the speaker, the form reveals your gender every time you talk about your own past. A man says dělal jsem, a woman says dělala jsem — for the very same action, "I did."

"I was tired" said by…	Czech
a man	Byl jsem unavený.
a woman	Byla jsem unavená.

The same thing happens in the second person: which form you use depends on who you are talking to.

Včera jsem byla nemocná, tak jsem zůstala doma.

I was ill yesterday, so I stayed home. (said by a woman — byla, zůstala)

Co jsi celý víkend dělal?

What did you do all weekend? (asked of a man — dělal)

Co jsi celý víkend dělala?

What did you do all weekend? (asked of a woman — dělala)

For an English speaker this feels strange at first: English verbs are completely blind to gender, so you are not used to "outing" yourself grammatically. In Czech there is no neutral option in the singular — you must pick masculine or feminine, and the choice is your own (or your addressee's) gender. There is simply no way to say "I went" without committing to šel jsem (a man) or šla jsem (a woman).

The mixed-group rule: one man makes it masculine

What about a plural subject made of different genders — a group of friends, a couple, a family? The prescriptive rule is blunt: if the group contains at least one masculine animate member, the whole participle goes to the masculine animate -li. One man among ten women is enough.

Petr a Eva se vzali loni v létě.

Petr and Eva got married last summer. (mixed couple → masc. animate -li)

Eva a Jana přišly spolu.

Eva and Jana came together. (two women → feminine -ly)

Marie, Jana a jeden kluk se cestou ztratili.

Marie, Jana and one boy got lost on the way. (one male in the group → -li)

💡

For a mixed-gender group of people, default to -li the moment there is a single male present. Only an all-female or all-inanimate group takes -ly; only an all-neuter group takes -la.

Common Mistakes

❌ Byl jsem unavená.

Incorrect (said by a woman) — the participle must match the speaker; a woman says byla, not byl.

✅ Byla jsem unavená.

I was tired. (woman speaking)

❌ Studenti přišly pozdě.

Incorrect — studenti is masculine animate, so the ending is -li, not -ly.

✅ Studenti přišli pozdě.

The students arrived late.

❌ Ženy už odešli.

Incorrect — ženy is feminine, so the ending is -ly, not -li.

✅ Ženy už odešly.

The women have already left.

❌ Děti si hráli na zahradě.

Incorrect — děti is grammatically feminine, so it takes -ly.

✅ Děti si hrály na zahradě.

The children were playing in the garden.

Key Takeaways

The l-participle agrees with the subject: singular -l / -la / -lo, plural -li / -ly / -la.
The plural splits by animacy: masculine animate -li, everything else -ly, all-neuter -la.
i and y sound the same, so the -li / -ly difference is purely a spelling rule driven by gender — a top error even for natives.
In the first and second person, the form reveals the speaker's or addressee's gender: dělal jsem (man) vs dělala jsem (woman).
In a mixed-gender group, one masculine animate member pulls the whole participle to -li.

Now practice Czech

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Czech→