Annotated Text: Instructions and Notices

Instructions, recipes and public notices form a register of their own in Polish, and that register has its own grammar. Where English keeps the plain imperative everywhere ("mix the eggs", "do not smoke"), Polish systematically avoids addressing a reader directly. Recipes use the bare infinitive, official instructions use należy or impersonal się, and prohibitions use a noun phrase: zakaz or zabrania się plus the genitive. Reading real signs and recipes is the fastest way to internalise this, because the instructional register is everywhere in daily Polish life — in kitchens, on doors, in lifts and on trains.

A recipe: naleśniki (Polish pancakes)

Here is a short recipe in the standard Polish style. Notice that every cooking step is an infinitive, not an imperative.

The verbs wymieszać, dodać, odstawić, rozgrzać, posmarować, smażyć, podawać are all infinitives — the dictionary form. This is the default for written recipes. The logic is that a recipe is not a command from one person to another; it is a procedure, a sequence of operations valid for anyone, at any time. The infinitive is tenseless and personless, so it expresses exactly that: do this, whoever you are, whenever you cook. English cannot do this — "to mix the flour" is ungrammatical as an instruction — so the closest English equivalent is the imperative, which is why translations come out as commands even though the Polish form is not one.

Aspect still matters here. Most discrete steps take the perfective infinitive (dodać, rozgrzać, posmarować) because each is a completed, bounded action with a result. But ongoing or repeated steps take the imperfective (smażyć "to be frying", podawać "to serve [generally]"), because frying and serving describe a process or a habitual recommendation, not a single completed act. This is the same aspect logic that governs all Polish verbs, surfacing here in infinitive form.

A spoken or friendly recipe (a parent telling a child, a TV cook) may switch to the imperative instead: Wymieszaj mąkę, dodaj jajka, usmaż naleśniki "Mix the flour, add the eggs, fry the pancakes." Both styles are correct; the infinitive is the neutral written norm, the imperative is warmer and more direct.

Public signs and notices

Signs concentrate the instructional register into a few words. Three patterns dominate: należy for what you should do, the impersonal się for how things are done, and zakaz / zabrania się + genitive for what is forbidden.

Należy ("one should / it is necessary") is the workhorse of official instructions. It is an impersonal verb that takes an infinitive and never agrees with a subject — there is no "I", "you" or "we" attached to it. Należy zachować spokój literally reads "it-is-fitting to-keep calm". It is more formal and more universal than an imperative, which is exactly why notices use it: a sign speaks to everyone and to no one in particular. See the official-administrative register and musieć vs trzeba vs należy for the family of obligation expressions.

The impersonal się construction — drzwi otwiera się, bilety kasuje się — presents an action with no agent named at all. Grammatically the verb is in the third person singular and się removes the subject. It answers "how is it done?" rather than "who does it?", which suits a descriptive notice perfectly. This is covered in depth on impersonal sentences and impersonal się.

Prohibitions: the genitive trap

Prohibitions are where English speakers go most wrong, because Polish typically nominalises them. The two standard formulas are:

• Zakaz + genitive: zakaz is a noun ("a prohibition"), so whatever follows goes into the genitive. Zakaz palenia = "prohibition of smoking"; zakaz wstępu = "prohibition of entry"; zakaz parkowania = "prohibition of parking" (note palenia, wstępu, parkowania are genitives of the verbal nouns).
• Zabrania się + genitive: an impersonal verb meaning "it is forbidden", which governs the genitive of its object: zabrania się wstępu "entry is forbidden", zabrania się fotografowania "photographing is forbidden".

The reason the genitive appears is the same reason it appears after negation and after expressions of absence: prohibition is a kind of negated existence ("there shall be no smoking"), and Polish marks the affected noun with the genitive. Compare the genitive of negation, which is the deep source of this pattern.

Common Mistakes

English speakers carry over the imperative and forget that recipes and signs run on infinitives, należy, się and the genitive of prohibition.

Key Takeaways

• Written recipes use the bare infinitive for each step (dodać, wymieszać, smażyć), choosing perfective for completed actions and imperfective for processes.
• Official instructions use należy + infinitive ("one should") and the impersonal się ("it is done"), avoiding direct address.
• Prohibitions are nominalised: zakaz + genitive (zakaz palenia) and zabrania się + genitive (zabrania się wstępu).
• The plain imperative (wymieszaj, nie pal) is correct but belongs to spoken, friendly or direct instruction, not to neutral written notices.