Question 1

Why is the word for 'meaning' written as znaczenia here instead of znaczenie?

Accepted Answer

This is because of the word nie. In Polish, when you negate a verb, the direct object usually changes from the Accusative case to the Genitive case. If it did matter, you would say To ma znaczenie (Accusative). Because it doesn't matter, the negation forces it to become To nie ma znaczenia (Genitive).

Question 2

Does Polish not have a direct verb for 'to matter'?

Accepted Answer

There is no single common verb that works exactly like 'to matter' in this context. Polish expresses this idea with the phrase mieć znaczenie, which literally translates to 'to have meaning' or 'to have significance'. Therefore, 'it doesn't matter' is literally 'it doesn't have meaning'.

Question 3

Why is the verb wygrał in the masculine form if we don't know the gender of the winner?

Accepted Answer

In Polish, when you use the pronoun kto (who) for an unknown person, the verb always defaults to the third-person masculine singular form in the past tense. Even if it was a women's tournament and you know a woman won, the grammatical rule for the word kto still requires the masculine wygrał.

Question 4

Is the comma before kto strictly necessary?

Accepted Answer

Yes! In English, we write 'It doesn't matter who won' without a comma. However, Polish punctuation rules are very strict about this: you must always put a comma to separate clauses, especially before words that introduce a subordinate clause like kto (who), co (what), or że (that).

To nie ma znaczenia, kto wygrał.

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