To talk about things that have already happened in Czech, you'll use the past tense, often called the preterite. Unlike English where you might say "I worked," Czech uses a two-part construction for most forms. It combines a helper verb with a special past-tense form of the main verb.

The main verb's special past form is called the l-participle because its basic form ends in the letter '-l'. Making it is usually straightforward. You take the verb's infinitive form (the one you'd find in a dictionary), remove the end, and add a new ending.

The second piece of the puzzle is the auxiliary (or helper) verb být, which means "to be." For the past tense, you'll use its present tense forms for the first person (I, we) and second person (you). This might seem odd, but it's the standard structure.

For the third person (he, she, it, they), you don't need the auxiliary verb at all. You just use the l-participle by itself.

Here's where Czech gets specific. The ending of the l-participle changes to match the gender and number of the subject. A man speaking will use a different verb ending than a woman speaking, even if they're both saying "I did."

Notice how the auxiliary verb jsem or jsi comes after the pronoun. In the third person, it disappears entirely. For plural subjects, the ending is usually -li. The ending -ly is used when 'they' refers to a group of all feminine or all neuter nouns.

To say something didn't happen, you add the prefix ne- directly to the l-participle. The auxiliary verb být does not change.

• Já jsem četla. (I read.) -> Já jsem **ne**četla. (I did not read.)
• On pracoval. (He worked.) -> On **ne**pracoval. (He did not work.)

Let's put this into practice with a reflexive verb, which uses se or si. These little words always want to be in the second position in the sentence. This means they come right after the first piece of information, often pushing the auxiliary verb jsem, jsi, etc., to the third position.

Look at the verb dívat se (to watch).

What about when there's a question word? The question word comes first, and se or si still takes the second spot.

Na co **ses** díval? (What did you watch?)

Here, the auxiliary jsi has shortened to just -s and attached to the word se for a smoother flow. This is very common in spoken Czech and shows how word order prioritizes the reflexive pronoun.

Now you have the tools to describe events from your weekend, a past job, or your last vacation. It's all about combining the right l-participle with the correct (or absent) form of být.