How English Works #9
How English Works 9
Passive Voice
Intermediate
In this series, we learn about English grammar differently than usual. There are no charts, no memorization, no confusing rules with millions of exceptions. Instead, we look at interesting aspects of English and how you can understand them. Don't worry if you fully understand. Notice these while you're immersing in English, and it'll all make sense with time.
Hi everyone, my name is Ben, and you're watching another episode of How English Works. In this series, my goal is to show you things about how English works. These are not your typical grammar lessons. We don't do any drills, there's no charts, and there's definitely no memorization. The goal is to help you better understand the things that we say in English and what they mean. So let's get into today's topic, which is the passive voice, which is a phrase that you might've heard before, but what is it and how does it change the meaning of the language? So let's start with this first word, passive. What does passive mean? Passive is something that is happening in the background, right? It's not, the opposite is active, right? So active, that's an I, and then passive. Let's do passive in blue. Something that is active is somebody doing something. I am taking action. I am doing a thing. I am being active. Active, action, same root. Passive is the opposite. When you're not really doing an action, you're waiting. And so somebody who's being active might say, all right, how can I help? I can do this. Let me help you. Something that's being passive, somebody that's being passive might be waiting in the background, waiting for somebody to tell them, okay, you should help by doing this. or something like that. We also talk sometimes about passive income. You might have heard that phrase before. Passive income is something that you don't do actively that still generates income, that still makes you money. So for example, owning a business that you don't work at. If you own a business that you don't work at, that is generating passive money because you're not doing anything, right? Active income is just a job. You're actively doing work to make money. So that's the important distinction here. The word voice is just a not super important word for this. The actual key to understanding the passive voice is this keyword. So let's look at an active sentence first because those are usually more common, they're clearer. So I record videos. Right? I record videos. This is an active sentence. I am doing something. I am doing a thing, right? I'm, I, so this is the person that's doing the sentence, the subject is doing a thing. I'm recording videos, right? That's an active sentence. I play football. I go to school. Anything that has a subject like that, a person or a thing that is doing an action is an active sentence. And it feels stronger. Right? I record videos. I do things. It's a strong sentence. A passive sentence is sort of the other way around. So you might find something like this. Videos are recorded. Right? So there we go. This is a passive sentence. Videos are the thing that are being recorded. You don't know who is doing something. Right? So the actual thing that is happening is just being. Right? And this is the inactive part of it. There's no actual action. You're just being something. Right? Um, a similar thing you might see, which isn't really the same as like, I am happy. This is not the same thing. This is just a, this is a different kind of sentence, right? There's not really an action there. You're, you're describing something about yourself. But it's similar, right? You can see there's a similar construction, right? I am happy, videos are recorded, has a similar vibe, right? But they are a little different since this is an action, right? It's describing a thing that was done to the videos versus this is a state of being, right? So like, the videos are done, for example, is not passive, because it's explaining like a state, as just a normal thing. That feels very normal, videos, or this would be the videos, right, would make more sense. The videos are done, I might say to my boss, hey boss, the videos are done. Perfect, right, that's a good sentence, that is not really active or passive, it's sort of just as a statement. but passive sentences feel more passive, right? And go figure. That's the name. Um, and so if somebody says, um, for example, um, let's see, what's a good example. Um, I can't think of an example. I gotta come up with something, okay. Like work was done, right? Work was done. This is a bad example because it's similar to this up here. This one is, it's because done in this case is the adjective, it is done, it's a done thing. This is the verb, right? So it's describing this thing. So work was, let's do continued, that's better. Work was continued. That's even more passive. And it's passive because we don't know really who's doing work. Work was just continued. That's sort of just a boring general statement that's not very helpful. And so this is why the passive voice can be kind of hard to use well, because if you use it like this, it's not very useful to like giving information, right? You don't learn anything about who did the work, what kind of work was done, right? Was it fast or slow? There's just a lot of stuff missing. And that's why it feels really passive, right? Work was done, the work was continued, but It's sort of a way of avoiding saying something, right? Because probably the work is not done, right? Work was continued, but there was no progress made, for example. But an active version was like, I continued working on it. That gives you more information that you know who is continuing the work. In this case, you're assuming that they know what it is. But this is just not helpful. It's avoiding that active action of saying what happened. And that is one of the big problems of the passive voice is that it is not only a little bit boring, you kind of miss out on information, but it's also like, It's as if you're avoiding saying something, right? So let's get rid of all this. Let's look at some other examples. Oh, like another great use or another, not really great. A common use of it is like to avoid responsibility, right? So you might see something in the news, right? Shots were fired. Right? Shots were fired. That means that somebody shot, but you don't know who, who shot the shots, right? Who fired the shots? This is just saying that it happened. It's a statement of fact that shots were fired. And so this can be either to hide information, right? Was it the police who shot, who fired shots? Was it, was it criminals? Criminals? Was it a gang, right? Who was it? We don't know who it was. And so if they're trying to hide information or conceal information, that's a possible way to do it, right? Just to say shots were fired, right? Or something was done, right? Whatever it might be. However, it's not always just to hide information. It can also be used as, like a way to say a general statement, right? In this case, right? So it's a very general thing, right? So, um, for like, if you're like in the past, you might talk about something in the, in the, what the sixties movies were shot in black and white. Oh, it's gonna be black, white. That actually would mean between, but whatever. In the 60s, movies were shot in black and white. That is also passive, right? The movies didn't shoot themselves, they were shot by some other person. But since you're talking in general, there's no reason just to say they shot movies in black and white. You could say that, that is an active version of that sentence, right? They shot movies in black and white. But the problem is that they also doesn't have information, right? Let's make this in blue. They also is not saying it. Who is they? There's so there's it's two options. Either you say they that doesn't mean much or you say the passive which also doesn't have that extra meaning. because you're talking about a general timeframe. In the 1960s, movies were shot in black and white. That's totally normal, that's totally fine for making a passive statement because you're talking in general, right? The difficulty or problem that people come into is when they use the passive voice to kind of not have good information in a way that is unclear, right? So that example of work was continued or English was learned is so unhelpful that it's not a good thing to say because you're intentionally hiding information, I guess. But then it's also a very normal thing to use when you're talking in this very general sense of something was done by lots of people. It doesn't matter who it was. The thing is more important. I think that's the takeaway that I want you to have from this, is that the passive voice is putting the focus onto the thing, not onto the person, right? So let's look at one final example that we can finish with. Let's see. Let's see. Dinner was cooked. Dinner was cooked. But then my dad cooked, that's cooed, that's not a word, cooked dinner, right? There's the same meaning here, right? General meaning, there is a dinner which is finished, right? It has been cooked. But the focus here is on dinner and the focus here is on my dad, right? And so if the person that did the thing matters, you want it to be inactive. But if the thing is way more important, like to the point that the person that did it is not important, then you might want to try considering a passive sentence. Just make sure that you're not using it to hide information that would be useful or make that decision. Maybe it is useful. You might also see it in stories where they do sort of want to hide who did it. The door was closed slowly as he entered. Who's he? I don't know. right but um yeah that's the passive voice i hope that you found this helpful i hope that this helps you understand the different feeling that it that it creates when you read something in the passive voice or hear something in the passive voice and hopefully it demystifies a little bit the the name passive voice and why it's called that but that's everything for this episode of how English works. If you enjoyed it, make sure to leave a comment below and let me know what else you'd like to know about how English works. And I'll make an episode on that in the future. But that's it for me today. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.