The Passive Voice

The Passive Voice

By Borja Mencías

What is the passive voice?

It is the opposite of the active voice!

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Active: Everybody loves chocolate.

Passive: Chocolate is loved by everybody.​

am /are / is

was /were

been

being​

Passive: BE (form)+ past participle

Grammatical Structure

present

past

perfect tenses

continuous tenses

When is it used?

When the action is more important than the person who does it.

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​The person who does the action is not important or is unknown.

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​It is obvious who does it.

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The object cannot do it (the action) itself.​

€ 3.636.254​ were gathered at the Gran Recapte.​

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​Lazarillo de Tormes was written in the XVI century.

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I was arrested last week (by the police). I was robbed (by the burglar).

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All the doughnuts were sold before noon.

Who performs the action?

by + person

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The cat was rescued (by the firefighters).​

​the AGENT (syntactically speaking)

BUT!!

It can only be used with transitive verbs. Those that need an object.

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I bought the present.

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I arrived late.

​The present was bought by me.

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Late was me arrivato?​

List of tenses

Let the passive games begin