Polish language - impersonal forms (for general statements, etc)

Category: GeneralGrammar Rules

Polish language - impersonal forms (for general statements, etc) Table of contents

What are impersonal forms

These are general statements, often about groups of people.

Examples

w krakowie kupje się kieszkania - 'in Kraków, people buy apartments' = a general statement that people in krakow buy apartments. It isn't referring to any specific people, but a group of people in general.

This could also be written (not as impersonal form) as w krakowie, ludzie kupiją... or w krakowie, wszyscy kupują.... But writing it in the impersonal form is just another option! They all (these examples) basically mean the same thing!

How to form impersonal forms in Polish

  1. Use the 'ono' form of the verb
  2. add 'się' at the end
  3. e.g. if you were to conjugate the verb normally ('he buys/he is buying') then you would get ono kupuje. So just add 'się' to that. kupuje się
  4. For past tense ("in the past, people used to...") write it like the ono version of the past tense: (ono) kupowało się...
  5. For future tense ("people will ...") write it like this: będzie kupowało się/będzie kupować się


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