Past tense is used to describe and talk about events that already happened. In Czech, we only have one type of past tense. However, there are more ways of forming the past tense based on the type and aspect of the verb. In the article, we will cover the past tense of imperfective verbs.
How is the past tense formed?
Past tense consists of two parts: past participle and auxiliary verb. An example can be Pracoval jsem. (I worked.), where pracoval is the past participle of the verb pracovat and jsem is the auxiliary verb.
Let's break this down more in detail.
Past participle (l-form)
Past participle form, also referred to as l-form (l-forma), carries the meaning of the utterance.
How do we make the l-form? We take the infinitive of the verb, drop the last -t and add -l instead.
For example:
other examples: snídat -> snídal, vstávat -> vstával, hrát -> hrál
The forms shown above are masculine. Feminine takes -la, neuter takes -lo and plural takes -li.
For example: On pracoval. (He worked.) / Ona pracovala. (She worked). /Ono pracovalo. (It worked). / Oni pracovali. (They worked).
Irregular l-forms
There are also irregular l-forms which we have to memorise.
shortened vowel: být -> byl, psát -> psal, spát -> spal, pít -> pil
Auxiliary verb
Now we know how to form the l-form. The second part of the past tense is the auxiliary verb. As you can probably tell from the example of Pracoval jsem., the second part is jsem which is a conjugated form of the verb to be - být. See the table below.
As you can see, third person singular and plural (on, ona, ono, oni) do not have the auxiliary verb.
Negation
Negation is formed by adding the prefix ne- to the main verb. For example:
