The complete transgressive system, including the past

The transgressive (přechodník) is a verb form that works like an English participle clause: Having brought the coffee, she... Unlike English -ing, it agrees with the subject in gender and number. In modern Czech it is bookish. You meet it in 19th-century prose, in Vladislav Vančura's deliberately archaic novels, in legal texts and in ironic journalism, and you use a dozen frozen transgressives every week without noticing. At C2 you should read every form and be able to drop one in for effect.

The full paradigm

Type	Masculine sg.	Feminine and neuter sg.	Plural
present; 3rd pl. in -ou (nesou)	nesa	nesouc	nesouce
present; 3rd pl. in -í (prosí)	prose	prosíc	prosíce
present; 3rd pl. in -ají (dělají)	dělaje	dělajíc	dělajíce
present of být	jsa	jsouc	jsouce
past; vowel stem (udělal)	udělav	udělavši	udělavše
past; consonant stem (přinesl)	přines	přinesši	přinesše
past of být	byv	byvši	byvše

The present transgressive, normally from imperfective verbs, describes an action running alongside the main verb: Sedě u okna, četl si noviny. The past transgressive, from perfective verbs, describes an action completed before it: Přinesši kávu, postavila ji mlčky na stůl. Both need the same subject as the main clause; a Czech dangling transgressive is as much a mistake as an English dangling participle.

Frozen forms you already use

• chtě nechtě - like it or not: Chtě nechtě jsme museli uznat, že měl pravdu.
• nehledě na - regardless of; nemluvě o - not to mention; soudě podle - judging by
• počínaje ... a konče - from ... to: počínaje Chebem a konče Ostravou
• vyjma - except; takřka - almost, from tak řka, "so to say"

These no longer agree with anything: a woman says soudě podle toho just as a man does.

Adjectives born from transgressives

Add -í to the feminine form and you get an adjective: nesoucí, dělající, vědoucí. Budoucí (future) comes from budouc, the old transgressive of být. The past forms give -vší adjectives such as zemřevší and the officialese proběhnuvší (proběhnuvší jednání, the meeting that took place), a favourite of press releases.

Where learners and natives slip

Consonant stems take no -v in the past: *přinesv does not exist; the forms are přines, přinesši, přinesše. The typical native error is the wrong gender, a feminine form with a male subject: *Přišedši domů, otec... instead of Přišed domů, otec... Get the agreement right and a single transgressive in an email reads as wit; get it wrong and it reads as pretension.