Passive Voice
Passive Voice
English forms the passive the same basic way French does — a form of 'be' plus a past participle — so the construction itself should feel immediately recognizable. The one real difference: French requires that past participle to agree in gender and number with the subject, exactly like an adjective, something English past participles never do.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Formation: être + past participle, agreeing with the subject
La lettre est écrite par Marie. / Les lettres sont écrites par Marie.
The letter is written by Marie. / The letters are written by Marie.
The passive is built from être (in whatever tense the sentence needs) plus a past participle that behaves like an adjective describing the subject. English 'is written' never changes shape regardless of the subject's gender or number, but French écrite/écrits/écrites all shift their ending to match — one more place where a French verb form silently encodes information ('the letter' is feminine) that its English translation gives no clue about at all.
Only verbs with a direct object can be passivized
On lui a donné un livre. (not a natural direct passive in French)
He was given a book.
Just as in English, only transitive verbs (ones taking a direct object) can be turned passive. But English also allows passivizing the INDIRECT object of a double-object verb — 'he was given a book' promotes the recipient, not the book, to subject position. French cannot do this: donner's direct object is le livre, not lui, so a literal passive would have to promote le livre ('un livre lui a été donné', awkward), and French instead prefers the active construction with on: 'On lui a donné un livre.' Watch for this whenever you're tempted to passivize an English sentence built on 'give', 'tell', 'send', or 'show' with a person as the surface subject.
French uses the true passive far less than English does
On parle français ici. (preferred) vs. Le français est parlé ici. (grammatical but stiffer)
French is spoken here.
Even where a direct être-passive is grammatically possible, everyday spoken French usually prefers an active construction with the impersonal on, or a reflexive-passive (ça se dit, 'that's said' — covered in full later), reserving the true être-passive for formal, written, or journalistic registers. English, by contrast, reaches for the passive constantly in ordinary conversation ('it was decided', 'mistakes were made') — so a direct word-for-word passive translation from English often sounds more formal or bookish in French than the English original did.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| être fait(e) | eh-truh fet | to be made/done |
| être vendu(e) | eh-truh vahn-DU | to be sold |
| être construit(e) | eh-truh kon-STRWEE | to be built |
| être invité(e) | eh-truh an-vee-TAY | to be invited |
| être payé(e) | eh-truh pay-YAY | to be paid |
| être choisi(e) | eh-truh shwah-ZEE | to be chosen |
| par | par | by (the agent) |
| la construction | lah kon-strook-see-OHN | construction |