Passive Voice
Passive Voice
German forms the passive voice with werden + past participle, structurally similar to English's 'to be' + past participle — a rare case where the two languages line up closely, though German's rules for when a passive is even possible differ.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
werden + Partizip II, not sein
Das Haus wird gebaut. (The house is being built.)
The house is being built.
German passive uses werden as the auxiliary, not sein — a genuine trap for English speakers, since English passive always uses 'to be' (is/was built), which looks like it should map to sein. Sein + participle in German instead describes a resulting state (Zustandspassiv, a later topic), not the action itself: das Haus ist gebaut means 'the house is [already, as a state] built', while das Haus wird gebaut means 'the house is [in the process of] being built.'
Präteritum passive: wurde + Partizip II
Das Haus wurde 1990 gebaut. (The house was built in 1990.)
The house was built in 1990.
To put a passive sentence in the past, conjugate werden in the Präteritum (wurde, wurdest, wurde, wurden, wurdet, wurden) rather than the present forms (wird, wirst...). This matches English's shift from 'is built' to 'was built' — only the auxiliary changes; the participle (gebaut) stays fixed at the end of the clause.
Impersonal passive: verbs with no object can still be 'passive'
Es wird viel gelacht. (There's a lot of laughing.)
There is a lot of laughing.
German can passivize even intransitive verbs that take no accusative object (lachen, tanzen, arbeiten) — something English can't do at all ('it is laughed' is ungrammatical). The dummy subject es fills the front slot, and the sentence describes an action happening in general, with no particular agent named. If another element starts the sentence, es simply disappears: Hier wird viel gelacht ('There's a lot of laughing here').
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| German | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| wird gebaut | veert geh-BOWT | is being built |
| wird gemacht | veert geh-MAHKHT | is being made / done |
| wird gegessen | veert geh-GES-en | is being eaten |
| wird gesehen | veert geh-ZAY-en | is being seen |
| wird geschrieben | veert geh-SHREE-ben | is being written |
| wird verkauft | veert fair-KOWFT | is being sold |
| wurde gebaut | VOOR-deh geh-BOWT | was built |
| wurde gegründet | VOOR-deh geh-GRUEN-det | was founded |
| wurde eingeladen | VOOR-deh INE-geh-lah-den | was invited |
| wird geöffnet | veert geh-ERF-net | is being opened |
| wird geschlossen | veert geh-SHLOS-en | is being closed |