Czech Noun Gender
Every Czech noun has a gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter. It isn't about biology — a table and a coffee have genders too. Gender matters because it controls the words around the noun: "this," "my," "good," and later the case endings. The good news: the last letter of a noun usually tells you its gender, so you rarely have to memorise.
Three Genders, One Clue
Reading Gender From the Ending
Look at the last letter and you can guess right most of the time.
hrad, pes, stůl
castle, dog, table — all masculine
Note: End in a consonant → masculine.
káva, žena, škola
coffee, woman, school — all feminine
Note: End in -a → feminine (a small group end in -e, like růže, ulice).
pivo, město, auto
beer, city, car — all neuter
Note: End in -o → neuter (also many -í words like nádraží, náměstí).
Ten, Ta, To — This
Czech has three words for "this / that," one per gender. Matching them is the first place gender shows up in a sentence.
Adjectives Agree
Adjectives take one of three endings to match the noun's gender. The model adjective dobrý (good) shows the pattern:
Colours and other describing words follow the same -ý / -á / -é pattern: černý pes (black dog), černá kočka (black cat), černé auto (black car).
To je dobrá káva a dobré pivo.
This is good coffee and good beer.
Note: dobrá matches feminine káva, dobré matches neuter pivo — the adjectives echo the gender.
Once gender feels automatic, plurals and cases stop looking random. Next: plurals.