Nominativ: die Substantive

The nominative is the noun in its basic shape, the one you find in the dictionary: student, káva, město. Czech calls it the first case (1. pád) and asks for it with kdo? (who?) for people and animals and co? (what?) for things.

Why it needs a name

English nouns never change for their role in the sentence, so English speakers have never needed the word "nominative". But English pronouns do change: "I see him" against "he sees me", "she" against "her". Czech does to every noun what English does only to "I" and "me". The nominative is the "I" form; the other six cases are variations on it, and you will meet them one by one.

When you use it

For the subject, the one doing the action: Babička vaří guláš. (Kdo vaří? - Babička.) And on both sides of být (to be): Petr je učitel. Kdo je ten pán? - To je pan Dvořák, náš soused. Co je to? - To je svíčková. No article goes in front: "a teacher" is just učitel.

Note the small pair in that example: pan with a short a is "Mr" before a name (pan Dvořák); pán with a long á is "gentleman" (ten pán). One mark, two words.

Model words

Czech grammar sorts nouns into groups, each named after a model word (vzor). Nouns in the same group take the same endings in every case, so a dictionary or teacher will often say "declines like žena". You do not need them for the nominative itself, but this is where the groups come from:

Within one gender, the split is mostly between "hard" and "soft" groups, decided by the last consonant: soft ones end in sounds like ž, š, č, ř, c, j (muž, pokoj, ulice). From the accusative on, that difference starts to show in the endings.