Why ‘With’ Breaks Your Prompts (And How Polish Fixes It)

Category: Structure Pattern
Level: Beginner
Pattern: The “Using” Operator (Instrumental Case)
Vocabulary: Przeanalizuj (Analyze), kod (code), komentarzami (with comments, as the tool)
Copy-paste prompt:

Przeanalizuj kod komentarzami. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

Use it when you want the AI to rewrite your code and insert helpful inline comments, not write a separate explanation underneath.

1. The Task

You want the AI to analyze your code by inserting explanations directly into the code itself as inline comments, instead of writing a separate paragraph below it.

2. The English Problem

English has a tiny structural bug. Call it an English ambiguity: the word with does too many jobs. Polish Instrumental case fixes it.

Analyze the code with comments.

That sentence can be read two different ways, and both are grammatically valid.

• Parse A (Filter): Analyze the code that already contains comments.
• Parse B (Tool): Analyze the code by adding comments as you go.

Many models default to Parse A. They treat “with comments” like a property of the input, not a method for producing the output. So you end up rewriting your prompt into something longer like “Analyze the code by adding comments to it.”

3. The Polish Fix

Polish does not use one word for both meanings of “with.” It splits the idea into different structures.

• Accompaniment (soup with salad): uses a preposition, often z
  zupa z sałatką
• Tool or means (eat soup with a spoon): uses the Instrumental case
  Jem zupę łyżką.

For prompts, we want the second one. We want “comments” to be treated as the tool.

4. The Polish Prompt

Przeanalizuj kod komentarzami. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

Here is what each word is doing.

The magic is not mystical. It is structural. komentarzami makes “comments” the method.

5. Test It Yourself

1. Paste a short piece of raw, uncommented code into ChatGPT (or your favorite model).
2. Run this English prompt:

Analyze the code with comments.

Watch for failure signs: it summarizes below the code, or it complains that there are no comments to analyze.

3. Now run the Polish prompt:

Przeanalizuj kod komentarzami. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

Watch for success: it rewrites the code block and inserts comments line by line.

6. Why This Works

English relies on soft connector words like “with,” “by,” and “using.” Those words often allow more than one valid parse.

Polish can encode the relationship directly into the noun ending. The Instrumental case marks “this noun is the tool.” That one grammatical constraint removes the ambiguity.

7. Output Language

All Valid Polish prompts can return English output by adding:

Odpowiedz po angielsku.

Optional system instruction for readers:

When I write prompts in Polish, respond in English unless I specify otherwise.

8. Go Deeper: The Instrumental Toolkit

Once you learn this pattern, you can swap the tool word and control the output format with one extra word.

Try these three:

• listą (as a list)

  Wypisz to listą. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

• tabelą (as a table)

  Przedstaw to tabelą. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

• przykładami (using examples)

  Wyjaśnij to przykładami. Odpowiedz po angielsku.

Rule of thumb (enough for now):
-ą often shows up with feminine tools like tabela → tabelą
-ami often shows up with plural tools like komentarze → komentarzami

Chapter 6 covers the full toolkit with more examples.

// Could mean: the input already has comments
{
  "input": { "type": "code", "has_comments": true }
}

// Or could mean: analyze using a method
{
"action": "analyze",
"method": "comments"
}

{
  "action": "analyze",
  "target": "code",
  "tool": "comments_inline"
}

Buy Valid Polish Volume 1 (PDF) or the paperback/Kindle ebook on Amazon.

Valid Polish
Language for the Digerati.