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Slovak grammar A1: beginner

The complete guide from A1 to B1: the rules, examples to listen to, the usual mistakes.

Level A1 covers the grammar of first exchanges in Slovak: introducing yourself, naming and describing people and things, saying what you do, have, like, want and can do, where you are, where you are going and with whom, counting and paying, telling the time and the date, and saying what happened and what will happen. Four cases of the singular, the nominative plural and three tenses of the verb are met at this level.

What A1 covers

  • the present of the conjugation classes and of the irregular byť, mať, ísť, jesť and vedieť, the past, and the future with budem;
  • the gender of nouns, with the adjectives, ten, the possessives and the numerals that agree with it;
  • the nominative, accusative, locative and instrumental of the singular, the nominative plural, and the genitive after do and z in set phrases;
  • the modal verbs chcieť, môcť, musieť, vedieť and mať followed by an infinitive;
  • the numbers, the hours, the days, the months and the date.

What is new for an English speaker

  • Slovak has no articles: dom is “a house” or “the house”, as the situation shows;
  • every noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, things included, and its gender can usually be read from its ending: stôl, káva, auto;
  • a case ending is used where English has word order or a preposition: Mám kávu (“I have a coffee”), v Žiline (“in Žilina”), vlakom (“by train”);
  • the ending of the verb shows the person, so the subject pronoun is usually left out: Bývam v Nitre (“I live in Nitra”);
  • the past shows the gender of the subject, with som or si in second place in the first and second persons and no auxiliary in the third: bol som (a man), bola som (a woman), Hana bola doma;
  • the short words sa, si, som and ma come second in the clause: Včera som sa učil;
  • a negative word such as nič or nikto is used with a negative verb: Nikto nič nemá (“Nobody has anything”);
  • the marks over the letters belong to the spelling and change the word: byt (“flat”) and byť (“to be”), mesto (“town”) and mestá (“towns”); and a long syllable is usually not followed by a long ending (the rhythmic law): volám, but čítam.

The usual difficulties

  • the accusative of a masculine person or animal, which differs from that of a thing: Hľadám brata, but Hľadám kľúč;
  • v or na for English “in” and “at”, learnt with each place: v škole, but na pošte and na Slovensku;
  • two questions where English has one: kde? (at which place) and kam? (to which place): v meste, do mesta;
  • age with mať, not with byť: Mám dvadsať rokov (“I am twenty”);
  • the plural boli ste for one person addressed politely, man or woman.

  1. Byť

    The first sentences in Slovak rest on the verb byť (“to be”), which has a different form for each person of the present, and on to je, which points out a person or a thing.

  2. The present

    A Slovak verb has six forms in the present, one for each person, and the same present translates “I work” and “I am working”.

  3. Gender

    Every Slovak noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, things as well as people, and the words used with it, ten, the adjectives, the possessives and the numerals, agree with it.

  4. The plural

    The nominative plural of a Slovak noun is formed from the singular, and its ending depends on the gender, on whether the last consonant is hard or soft and, for masculine nouns, on whether the noun names men.

  5. The accusative

    The accusative is the case of the direct object, the person or thing that is had, bought, read, phoned or looked for.

  6. The locative

    The locative is the case of place after the prepositions v and na, of nearness after pri, of the topic after o, and of time after po.

  7. The instrumental

    The instrumental is the case of company and of means.

  8. Going places

    Slovak has three questions about place: kde? (at which place), kam? (to which place) and odkiaľ? (from which place).

  9. Possessives

    A possessive says whose a person or thing is.

  10. The past

    The Slovak past has one form for every kind of past: Pracoval som is “I worked”, “I was working” and “I have worked”.

  11. The future

    The Slovak future has three shapes: the future of byť (budem), the same forms followed by an infinitive (budem pracovať), and the one-word forms of a few verbs (pôjdem, prídem).

  12. Modal verbs

    The modal verbs chcieť (“to want”), môcť (“can, may”), musieť (“must, to have to”), vedieť (“to know how”) and mať (“to be supposed to”) are followed directly by an infinitive, with no word for English “to”.

  13. Numbers and time

    Slovak numerals are joined to nouns in three ways: jeden and dva agree with the gender of the noun, the nominative plural follows dva, tri and štyri, and from päť on the noun is in the genitive plural, learnt at A1 in set phrases.

  14. Small words

    A few short words do much of the work of a Slovak sentence: the conjunctions join clauses, už and ešte place an action in time, adverbs say how, how much and how often, adjectives made from nouns are used where English puts a noun before a noun, and the letters i and y are chosen by the consonant before them.

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