O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.

During the holidays the library is open only in the morning.

Breakdown of O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.

• být: to be
• jen: only
• knihovna: the library
• otevřený: open
• prázdniny: the holidays
• o: during
• dopoledne: in the morning

Questions & Answers about O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.

Why is it “O prázdninách” and not something like “v prázdninách” or “během prázdnin”?

The preposition o is commonly used with time expressions to mean “during / on”:

• o prázdninách – during the holidays
• o víkendu – at / on the weekend
• o Vánocích – at Christmas

With this meaning, o always takes the locative case, so you get prázdninách (locative plural).

You could also say:

• během prázdnin – during the holidays (more neutral/formal)
• v době prázdnin – in the period of the holidays (more formal)

But “v prázdninách” is not idiomatic. For time periods like holidays or weekends, o + locative is the natural choice in Czech.

What exactly is “prázdninách”? Why does it look like that?

Base word: prázdniny – holidays, (school) vacation.

Key points:

• prázdniny is grammatically plural only (there is no singular form the way English has “a holiday”).
• In the sentence, o requires the locative case, so prázdniny becomes prázdninách:
  • Nominative plural: prázdniny (the holidays)
  • Locative plural: (o) prázdninách (during the holidays)

So o prázdninách literally means “on the holidays / during the holidays.”

Also note:

• prázdniny usually refers to school holidays, especially the long summer holidays.
• For your personal “vacation from work”, you’d more often hear dovolená.

Why is it “je knihovna otevřená” instead of just a verb like “otevírá”?

Czech often expresses “is open” as “je + (past passive) participle / adjective”:

• je otevřená – is open (literally: is in an opened state)

This describes a state, not an action.

If you used a verb of opening:

• knihovna se otevírá – the library is opening / (it) opens

that would focus on the action of opening, not the general opening hours.

In our sentence:

• O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.
  = During the holidays, the library is (only) in an open state in the morning (i.e. that’s when it is open).

So “je + otevřená” is the natural way to talk about when a place is open.

Why does it say “otevřená” and not “otevřena” or “otevřeno”?

otevřená is an adjective that must agree with knihovna:

• knihovna – feminine, singular, nominative
• → otevřená – feminine, singular, nominative

Compare:

• obchod (shop) – masculine:
  
  • Obchod je otevřený. – The shop is open.
• restaurace – feminine:
  
  • Restaurace je otevřená. – The restaurant is open.
• muzeum – neuter:
  
  • Muzeum je otevřené. – The museum is open.

About the forms you mentioned:

• otevřená – “long” adjective form; common, neutral, everyday.
• otevřena – “short” passive form; sounds more formal/literary.
  
  • Knihovna je otevřena jen dopoledne. – correct, but more official style.
• otevřeno – neuter short form, often impersonal:
  • Dnes je otevřeno. – It is open today. (no explicit subject)

In your sentence, “otevřená” is the normal colloquial/neutral choice because it matches knihovna grammatically and stylistically.

What is the role of “jen” here, and how is it different from “jenom” or “pouze”?

jen means “only / just”.

• jen dopoledne – only in the morning (before noon)

Other options:

• jenom – very common in speech, slightly more colloquial, but usually interchangeable with jen here:
  • …je knihovna otevřená jenom dopoledne.
• pouze – more formal / written:
  • …je knihovna otevřená pouze dopoledne.

All three can appear in the same position before the word they limit:

• jen / jenom / pouze dopoledne

So the main difference is style, not meaning:

• jen – neutral, most frequent
• jenom – informal, very common
• pouze – formal / written

What kind of word is “dopoledne”? Is there a case ending missing?

dopoledne literally means “the (part of the) day before noon”, roughly late morning.

Grammatically:

• It is an indeclinable word used mostly as a time adverb:
  
  • O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne. – open only in the morning (before noon).
• You do not need a preposition like “in” or a case ending; it already behaves like an adverbial time expression.

Compare other time words:

• ráno – in the morning (earlier part of the morning)
• odpoledne – in the afternoon
• večer – in the evening

All of these can stand alone as time adverbs, just like “tomorrow” or “today” in English.

Can the word order be changed, for example to “Knihovna je o prázdninách otevřená jen dopoledne”?

Yes. Czech word order is more flexible than English. Some common variants:

1. O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.
   – Neutral: first you set the time frame (“during the holidays”), then say what happens.

2. Knihovna je o prázdninách otevřená jen dopoledne.
   – Also fine; starts with “the library” as the topic.

3. Jen dopoledne je knihovna o prázdninách otevřená.
   – Emphasis on “only in the morning” (somewhat marked/emphatic).

All of these are grammatically correct.

Czech typically puts known/background information earlier and new/important information later, but in simple sentences like this, several orders sound natural.

Why is there no word for “the” before “knihovna”?

Czech has no articles (no words like “a”, “an”, or “the”).

• knihovna can mean “a library” or “the library”, depending on context.

In this sentence, context (e.g. a notice on the door, a local announcement) would tell you it’s “the library” that both speaker and listener know about.

To make things more specific, Czech might use other means:

• naše knihovna – our library
• městská knihovna – the city library
• tahle knihovna – this library

But when not specified, knihovna is just “library”, and the listener infers a/the from context.

The verb is in the present tense (je). Does that mean this happens right now, or every holiday, or what?

Czech uses the present tense not only for what is happening “right now”, but also for regular or scheduled facts.

Here, “O prázdninách je knihovna otevřená…” is like:

• “During the holidays, the library is open only in the mornings.”

This typically means:

• general rule / schedule for (these) holidays, somewhat like an announcement:
  
  • “Whenever it’s the holiday period, this is our opening time.”

If you wanted to stress the future holidays, you could use future forms:

• O prázdninách bude knihovna otevřená jen dopoledne.
  – During the holidays, the library will be open only in the morning.

But using present tense with a time expression like o prázdninách is absolutely natural for timetables, rules, and schedules.

What is the difference between “o prázdninách” and other time expressions with “o”, like “o víkendu” or “o Vánocích”?

They all follow the same pattern:

• o + [time period in locative] = “during / on / at [time period]”

Examples:

• o prázdninách – during the (school) holidays
• o víkendu – on/at the weekend
• o Vánocích – at Christmas
• o Velikonocích – at Easter
• o půlnoci – at midnight

The only difference is the word and its locative form:

• prázdniny → (o) prázdninách
• víkend → (o) víkendu
• Vánoce → (o) Vánocích

So “o prázdninách” fits the same grammar pattern as these other expressions.

How should I pronounce “prázdninách” and especially the “ř” in “knihovna”?

There is no ř in “knihovna”; that sound appears in “otevřená”.

Pronunciation tips:

• O prázdninách

  • Stress is always on the first syllable: O PRÁZ-dni-nách
  • á is a long a (like in “father” but held longer).
  • The zdn cluster is pronounced smoothly as three consonants [z-d-n] between vowels.

• knihovna

  • kni-ho-vna – also stressed on the first syllable: KNI-ho-vna
  • The kn cluster is pronounced without an extra vowel (not ku-ni).

• otevřená

  • Again, stress on first syllable: O-tev-ře-ná
  • ř is the tricky Czech sound: something like an r + zh together. One approach:
    • Start with a rolled r,
    • Then add voicing and frication like “zh” in “measure”.
  • It takes practice; even if your ř sounds more like r at first, you will still be understood.

The main rule to remember: in Czech, stress is almost always on the first syllable of the word.