Level: Beginners (A1/A2)
Category: General • Grammar 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
- Use the 'ono' form of the verb
- add 'się' at the end
- 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
- For past tense ("in the past, people used to...") write it like the ono version of the past tense: (ono) kupowało się...
- For future tense ("people will ...") write it like this: będzie kupowało się/będzie kupować się