Polski — Impersonal past forms in -no/-to
Polish has a special impersonal past tense ending in -no or -to. It reports an action without naming who did it: zbudowano most means "a bridge was built" — the doer is unknown or irrelevant. The form never changes for gender or number.
How it works
The ending is added to the past-participle stem: verbs whose passive participle ends in -ny take -no (zbudowany → zbudowano, powiedziany → powiedziano, znaleziony → znaleziono), and those ending in -ty take -to (otwarty → otwarto, zamknięty → zamknięto). There is no subject and no auxiliary; a direct object stays in the accusative: znaleziono klucze ("the keys were found").
Examples
| Participle → form | Meaning ("one / they …") |
|---|---|
| zbudowany → zbudowano | it was built / they built it |
| powiedziany → powiedziano | it was said / they said |
| znaleziony → znaleziono | it was found / they found it |
| otwarty → otwarto | it was opened / they opened it |
| zamknięty → zamknięto | it was closed / they closed it |
| napisany → napisano | it was written / they wrote |
Good to know
This form always refers to the past; there is no present or future -no/-to. Although it is agentless, it still implies a human doer, so it cannot be used for natural events — say drzewo zostało powalone ("the tree was felled"), not powalono for something the wind did. Compare the parallel się-passive: zbudowano dom vs the more colloquial dom się zbudował is wrong — use the impersonal or zbudowano.