być / zostać + Passive Participle

The passive voice is primarily used in formal, journalistic, or administrative contexts. In everyday speech, Poles often prefer the active voice, the impersonal się construction, or impersonal -no/-to forms. When used, the auxiliary verbs być and zostać agree with the subject in person and number, and show gender agreement in the past tense and conditional mood. Importantly, while the auxiliary may lack gender in the present or future tense, the passive participle itself ALWAYS retains gender, number, and case agreement with the subject (e.g., List będzie napisany vs. Książka będzie napisana).

1. Stative/Process vs. Eventive

• Być + Participle: Used with imperfective verbs to describe an ongoing process in the present, past, or future (List jest pisany - The letter is being written). It is also used with perfective verbs to describe a current state (Okno jest otwarte - The window is open).
• Zostać + Participle: Used only with perfective verbs to describe a completed event or a change of state. Because zostać is perfective, its present-tense forms function as the future tense (zostanie). Therefore, it only forms the past (został) and future passive, and has no present tense meaning. (Okno zostało otwarte - The window was opened).

2. Participle Formation
The participle acts like an adjective and follows adjective agreement rules. Note that adding these suffixes frequently triggers vowel or consonant mutations in the verb stem (e.g., widzieć → widziany, nosić → noszony):

• Verbs in -ać and many in -eć → -any (czytać → czytany, widzieć → widziany)
• Verbs in -ić/-yć → -ony (robić → robiony, kończyć → kończony)
• Verbs ending in consonants (-c, -ść, -źć) → -ony (piec → pieczony, znaleźć → znaleziony)
• Monosyllabic or -nąć verbs → -ty (myć → myty, zamknąć → zamknięty)

3. The Agent vs. The Instrument
If you need to mention who performed the action (a human agent), use the preposition przez followed by the Accusative case. However, if the action was performed by an inanimate tool, force, or instrument, do not use przez. Instead, use the bare Instrumental case (e.g., Okno zostało rozbite kamieniem - The window was broken by a stone).

4. The Transitivity Rule
In Polish, only transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) can form a personal passive voice. Verbs that take an indirect object, such as those requiring the Dative case (e.g., pomagać), cannot be made passive. You cannot say Jestem pomagany for 'I am helped'. Instead, you must use an active construction (Ktoś mi pomaga - Someone helps me) or an impersonal form.