Pádech

Pádech is a term used in Czech and related Slavic languages to denote the grammatical category commonly translated as "case." It describes how nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech take different forms to indicate their function in a sentence, such as subject, object, possession, or relation to prepositions. The singular pádech is used in grammar discussions to refer to this category, while the plural pády refers to the individual cases.

In Czech, the system comprises seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental. The forms, or endings, depend on gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and on the noun’s declension class; adjectives and pronouns agree with the noun in pádech. Other Slavic languages have different inventories; for example, Russian uses six cases, without a standard vocative in the modern language.

Linguists study pádech to analyze sentence structure, morphology, and syntax, as well as to explain how prepositions govern case selection and how verbs require specific cases for their arguments. The concept has a long tradition in grammars and language teaching and remains central to understanding inflectional systems in Slavic languages.