Endings & Cases: Grammar That Splits

The j- of jsem is silent for everyone, the standard included: careful and casual speakers alike say [sɛm]. 'Sem' is just how obecná writes it. So in Bohemia the form itself is the standard one

Moravian 'su', from older 'jsu' (a form built like 'nesu', 'vezu'). It is the stand-alone 'I am' of central and eastern Moravia (já su), and it marks the speaker as Moravian at once. The Lach dialects around Ostrava say sem

Everyone pronounces jsou without the j-: [sou̯], as in 'voni sou doma' (they are at home); obecná just writes it sou. The ou in 'jsou' is the Bohemian ú→ou shift (Old Czech 'jsú'), which the written standard accepted

Eastern Moravia keeps the old long ú ('oni sú doma'); Haná turns it into ó ('só'). Note the pair: 'já su' (I am) but 'oni sú' (they are) - only the vowel length tells them apart

Bohemian colloquial often clips to 'dělaj' (dropping final -í). Standard 'dělají' in careful speech. The -ají ending is itself a Bohemian innovation: Old Czech 'dělajú' turned ú into í after the soft j in the 14th century

The signature Moravian ending! -ú in eastern Moravia keeps the Old Czech 'dělajú'; -ó in Haná is younger, Haná's own narrowing of an earlier ou. Either way, this single sound is the #1 Moravian shibboleth

'Bych' is the 1st person singular conditional auxiliary used with any verb: 'šel bych' (I would go), 'dala bych si kafe' (I'd have a coffee). Bohemian obecná keeps it intact

Moravia says 'bych' too. The conditional is one of the places where the two lands agree - worth knowing, so you don't hear a regional marker where there isn't one

Bohemian routinely drops the 'jsem/sem' auxiliary in 1st person past: 'Já šel do obchodu' instead of 'Já jsem šel.' Very casual but extremely widespread.

Moravia does the same: with an explicit 'já' the auxiliary often goes ('Já šel do obchodu'), without it you say 'šel sem'. Note that the past-tense auxiliary is normally 'sem', not 'su' - 'su' is the stand-alone 'I am'

Colloquial speech often drops the j: 'pojď' → 'poď'. The prefix po- stays; only the glide between o and ď disappears in rapid speech

Moravia says 'poď' as well (as does Slovak), and the plural 'poďme' (let's go) is a typical eastern Moravian form. Some areas keep 'pojď'. The imperative is one area where Bohemian and Moravian largely converge

Standard imperative form of 'dát' (to give). Bohemian uses the standard form without modification.

In Haná the diphthong ej narrows to é, so 'dej' becomes 'dé' - the same Hanák habit that turns 'dobrý' into 'dobré'. Elsewhere in Moravia you hear 'dej'

Bohemian obecná spreads -ma to every noun: 'se ženama', 's kamarádama', 's městama'. The model is the old dual: 'rukama', 'nohama', 'očima' are standard Czech for everyone. What is colloquial is extending that pattern to all other nouns

Moravia says se ženama too: -ma/-ama is the instrumental plural of the Moravian dialects themselves (s domama in Haná, -ama in Slovácko and Valašsko; the Lach dialects have -mi or -ma). Careful speakers everywhere say the written -ami. And 'rukama', 'nohama' are standard on both sides

The -ma ending applied even to consonant stems. Standard: 'lidmi'. Colloquial: 'lidma'. You'll hear it constantly in casual speech, in Prague as in Brno.

Lidmi is the standard form, the one careful speakers use everywhere. In everyday Moravian speech you hear -ma too, so this is not a border between the lands: it is the gap between colloquial and written Czech

Bohemian dialects changed the old cluster šč into šť (ešče → ešťe), and the standard took the Bohemian form: ještě, štěstí. Obecná usually drops the j- as well: eště

All the Moravian dialect groups keep the old šč: ešče, ščestí (luck). This is one of the few changes that stopped at the Moravian line on every side, so ešče really does say 'Moravia' - just as Polish next door says jeszcze

The preposition v is devoiced to [f] before the voiceless p: standard pronunciation, the same everywhere. Before a vowel or a sonorant, Bohemian keeps a final consonant voiceless: 's otcem' [s otsɛm], 'jak ona' [jak ona]

Same [f] in Moravia: devoicing before a voiceless consonant is pan-Czech. Where eastern Moravia (and eastern Haná) does differ is before vowels and sonorants: a final consonant becomes voiced, so 's otcem' sounds [z otsɛm] and 'jak ona' [jaɡ ona]. That, not 'v Praze', is the giveaway. Brno, like Bohemia, keeps it voiceless

Old Czech changed a to e and u to i after soft consonants (naša → naše, ulicu → ulici). It happened in Bohemia, and the standard took it

Most Moravian dialects never made that change: naša ulica, na našu ulicu, like Slovak. Only the north of central Moravia patterns with Bohemia here. To Bohemian ears it sounds Slovak; it is simply the older Czech form

Obecná merges the plural: one ending for people and things alike (starý lidi = starý domy). The standard keeps them apart: staří lidé, staré domy

The Moravian dialects keep people and things apart in the plural, as the standard does: in Haná 'ťi staří liďi' but 'ti starí domi', in the east 'staré domy'. Here Moravian speech is closer to the textbook than Bohemian obecná