Annotated Text: Station and Public Announcements

Public announcements — the voice over the loudspeaker at the train station, the sign on the shop door, the warning by the platform edge — speak in a register you rarely meet in a textbook dialogue but constantly meet in real life: formal, courteous, and deliberately faceless. Nobody says I and nobody says you by name. Instead a whole institution addresses you politely through three signature constructions: prosimy o… ("we kindly ask for…"), the impersonal się ("one is asked to…"), and the future tense for schedules. This page walks through a set of original announcements you would genuinely hear or read in Poland and annotates exactly how that register is built.

At the train station

The verb odjedzie is the perfective future of odjechać ("to depart") — Polish uses the simple future for fixed timetable events, exactly where English also uses will ("the train will depart"). See the perfective future. Note z peronu ("from platform"): the preposition z meaning "from" takes the genitive, so peron becomes peronu. The platform and track numbers are ordinals in the genitive too — peron drugi → z peronu drugiego.

Here is the workhorse of the genre: prosimy o + accusative. The verb prosić ("to ask, to request") governs o plus the accusative of the thing requested — see the verb prosić. Zachowanie ostrożności ("the keeping of caution") is a verbal noun in the accusative. English would say "we ask that you be careful," turning it into a clause; Polish prefers a noun, which sounds more compact and more official.

This is the impersonal się at its most formal: uprasza się ("one is requested," "it is requested"). There is no subject at all — the się makes the request institutional, addressed to nobody and everybody. See the impersonal się. The object podróżnych ("passengers") is in the genitive-accusative (masculine personal plural), and the request itself again uses o + accusative: o niepozostawianie ("for not-leaving"). Note that the negation is written joined to the verbal noun: nie + pozostawianie → niepozostawianie.

At the airport

Szanowni państwo is the standard formal address — literally "respected sirs and madams" — and it is plural and gender-neutral, covering a whole crowd. Państwo triggers third-person plural agreement even though it addresses you. Again prosimy o + accusative: o przygotowanie ("for the preparing"). The objects kart pokładowych and dokumentów are in the genitive because they are governed by the verbal noun przygotowanie (preparing of something = genitive).

A close cousin of prosimy: the passive proszeni są ("are requested"), a passive participle of prosić agreeing with the masculine personal plural subject pasażerowie. It is even more impersonal — the airline doesn't say "we ask," it states that passengers "are asked." The reflexive verb zgłosić się ("to report, to check in") appears as the verbal noun zgłoszenie się, still under o + accusative.

In shops and public buildings

Uprzejmie informujemy, że… ("we courteously inform you that…") is the formulaic opener of countless notices. The adverb uprzejmie ("courteously, politely") signals the register before the message even arrives. The future będzie nieczynny ("will be closed") is the compound future of być plus an adjective — see the future of być. The date is genitive throughout: dwudziestego piątego grudnia ("of the twenty-fifth of December").

The bare noun zakaz ("prohibition") plus a verbal noun in the genitive is how Polish signs say "no X-ing": zakaz wnoszenia ("prohibition of bringing-in"), zakaz palenia ("no smoking"), zakaz wstępu ("no entry"). The genitive after zakaz is the genitive of the thing forbidden. The objects too go genitive: napojów i jedzenia. This noun-only style — no verb, no subject — is maximally compact and maximally impersonal.

Prosimy o niedotykanie ("we ask for not-touching") again pairs prosimy o with a negated verbal noun in the accusative. The second sentence shifts to a generic singular: zwiedzający ("the visitor / a visitor / whoever visits") is a nominalized participle standing for any person — another way Polish reaches an unnamed addressee.

Notice that prosimy can also be followed directly by an infinitive — prosimy nie zostawiać ("we ask you not to leave") — without o and without a noun. This is slightly less stiff than the o + noun version and very common on spoken announcements. Both are correct; the o + noun form is heavier and more bureaucratic.

The -no/-to impersonal in notices

Zamknięto ("[someone] closed / it was closed") is the -no/-to impersonal past — a uniquely Polish form that reports a completed action with no subject at all. It looks like a frozen neuter past participle but functions as a finite verb: zamknięto, otwarto, odwołano, wstrzymano. English has no single-word equivalent; it must use a passive ("was closed") or a vague "they." This form is the past-tense counterpart of the impersonal się and is the natural register of official notices. Z powodu remontu uses z powodu ("because of") + genitive: remontu.

Common Mistakes

English speakers consistently mishandle the request constructions because English builds them around you and a clause, while Polish builds them around a noun.

If you want an infinitive, drop the o: Prosimy zamknąć drzwi is also correct. The error is mixing the two patterns.

Key Takeaways

The formal-courteous register of Polish announcements rests on a small kit of tools. Prosimy o + accusative ("we ask for X") and its passive twin proszeni są o… turn requests into nouns. The impersonal się (uprasza się o…) and the -no/-to past (zamknięto, odwołano) erase the agent entirely so the institution can speak without a face. The future tense (odjedzie, będzie nieczynny) handles schedules just as English will does, and the genitive runs underneath everything — after z ("from"), after zakaz ("no…"), and inside every verbal-noun phrase. Once you hear these patterns as a set, every loudspeaker in Poland becomes intelligible.