Passive Voice in German 5 – German Passive Quirks

Hello everyone,

I’m back from my little Easter break and I think it’s high time for a bit of grammar again for a change.
And today, we’ll finally do the fifth part of the our series

German Passive Voice

At this point in the series, you already know what passive is, how to spot it and how to use the German werden-passive, which I also like to call… the passive.
And in the last part, we looked at some quirks of English passive that don’t really work in German.

Today, we’ll do the same for German and explore the so called Passiv-Ersatzformen, which are forms that express “a passive” while not really technically being one. And we’ll also find out about one really really weird use of the actual German passive that’ll make you go like:
“I’m not sure if I needed to know this, but thanks!”
This… uh… this is actually extreme excitement, just expressed the German way.
You know, us Germans, we never emote more than one standard deviation away from baseline.

Anyways, if you’re ready, let’s jump right in.

And we’ll start with that weird use of German passive that we could call … subject-less passive.

Subject-less Passive in German

Hmm, subject-less passive. A passive that has no subject. That sounds … intriguing.
A sentence that has no subject may already sound quite weird to an English speaker. But that alone is nothing too crazy. Many languages can and do skip the subject and have it implied by the verb instead.

A Subject-less Passive on the other hand… I mean, we’ve learned that the key point of passive was to put something into the role of the subject that wouldn’t be there otherwise.
Most languages, upon hearing this concept, were like “Nah, that’s absurd bro.” but German was immediately like “Wow, that sounds EXACTLY like something I need for my grammar collection.”
Most I mean… Latin had it, after all, and so do a few other languages.
And here we are… with sentences like this.

• Hier wird manchmal gearbeitet.
  Lit: Here, is worked sometimes.

This could be a “funny” little printout on an office desk and it’s something along the lines of “Sometimes, someone works here.”
German phrasing is in passive voice though and it does not have a subject.
Here’s another example:

• Hier wird mit Butter gekocht.
• “Here, is cooked with butter.”

Again, no grammatical subject to be found.
Now you might be like “Wait, so the subject is skipped, right? And people understand it from the context.”
But that’s actually NOT what’s going on. There REALLY is no subject. Like… a German native speaker wouldn’t even know what to put there as a subject if they had to.

There is a way of looking at this though that makes this type of structure pretty intuitive, connects it to werden and its core and even let’s us see an actual “subject”. And that way is called:

DMT.

Nah, kidding. It’s called “mind yoga” of course.
This next part is a bit nerdy, so feel free to skip it, but… don’t skip it. It’s like with Yoga… very few people can really perform all the postures perfectly. The goal is to go in as far as you can.
So yeah, let’s stretch our mind for a second.
Here it goes:

Think back to part two of this series for a second. The light breeze in the balmy evening sun, ripe grapes, a cold beer, a good song … a slower, more simple life it was back then, when you read that part half an hour ago. Or a few days or weeks.
Anyway, there, we talked about the verb werden and its weird triple meaning. Because it’s not only the helper verb for the passive voice, but ALSO the helper voice for future tense AND by itself it’s the translation for to become.
And what we found then is that these three meanings actually all share the same underlying theme of “evolving, growing toward”. I don’t want to dive into this again now, so just check out part two if you’re interested or want to refresh.
What we need now is the core notion of evolving. Or let’s call it unfolding for the sake of this mind bend.
So, with that in mind, let’s look at this weird subject-less passive again.

• Hier wird gearbeitet.

If we think of this werden not as a mere helper but in a sense of “unfolding”, then we can actually kind of see what the subject is…. it’s the action, the verb; in this case “gearbeitet”.
Essentially, we have:

• Here, working unfolds.

or rephrased a little more “normal”

• Here, working happens.

We can actually also apply this logic to actions that do involve a subject:

• Hier wird Bier getrunken.

We can view this through the passive lens (1) with “wird getrunken” as the verb and “Bier” as the subject.Or we could view it through our new action lens (2) and see the action of “drinking beer” as the subject of a verb werden with a sense of “unfolding, happening”.

1. Here, beer is drunken.
2. Here, drinking beer happens.

And I think this action-angle is generally helpful when it comes to translating this passive.

• Hier wird nicht gerannt!!
• No running here!!
  (an elementary school teacher yelling down the hallway)

• Auf der Party wurde viel genetzwerkt.
• There was a lot of networking going on at the party.

• In der Küche wird jeden Tag gezaubert und der Service ist auch top.
• Magic is taking place/happening in the kitchen every day and the service is also top notch.
  (a raving review for a high class restaurant)

In fact, it can even work with reflexive verbs.

• Hier wird sich gesonnt.
• Here, sunbathing (“oneself”) is happening.

Like… don’t get too hung up on the fact that it’s formally a passive in German. Just think on terms of an action taking place.

Now, how common is this passive?
Well, not too common, but it’s not some technical niche jargon either. It does sound a little bit dry, but as you can see from the examples above, it’s something you can totally find in daily life. People do use the subject-less passive in spoken German. Sometimes in sort of commands or instructions, other times people also use it to talk about what they did or experienced. And some people like it more than others.

That does not mean that you have to use it. There’s nothing that can’t be expressed any other way, so if you don’t really vibe with it, don’t bother.
The one thing that’s important is that you don’t get confused when you do see it but rather react like the main character that you are:
“Oh, we meet at last, Subject-less Passive. I have been expecting you!”

And you can add an evil laugh if you want to. Though… that might confuse the other person a bit.

Anyways, so that was the subject-less passive.
Now, let’s get to the last bit of “theory” of this series.
And that’s actually something you do need, at least if you want to pass a B2 or C1 German exam. They looooove this stuff.
I am talking about the German Passiv-Ersatzformen.

German Passiv-Ersatzformen (and why they suck)

Passive-Ersatzformen literally means passive replacement forms, and those are basically ways of phrasing something that has the same effect as passive voice without grammatically being a passive voice.
And by “effect” I primarily mean shifting the focus onto the entity that something is done to.

What’s important is that you DON’T get hung up on the term “replacement“. In fact, I find the whole concept of Passiv-Ersatzformen a bit stupid. Or at least they make way too big a huff about it in the official teacho-sphere. They’re just phrasings that happen to express something similar as a passive. I mean, I don’t call a Chicken McNugget “chicken replacement form“, just because it expresses something similar to chicken.

But yeah… the “PaSsIv-ErSaTzFoRmEn” ARE a staple of B2 or C1 courses and you do need them for exams. And even if you don’t plan on taking any of those, some of them are nice phrasings in their own right, that you might want to include into the way you talk. Not to replace passive, but just to express yourself.

Anyway, so let’s go over them one by one and we’ll start with the so called bekommen-passive.

Passiv-Ersatz – “bekommen, kriegen”

Or we could also call it the kriegen-passive, if we’re more on the colloquial side (which I totally am). The difference between bekommen and kriegen here really is just tone.
So yeah, here it is:

• Ich bekomme morgen meine Couch geliefert.
• My couch will be delivered to me tomorrow.
  Lit.: “I (subject) will be getting delivered my couch tomorrow.”

• Ich kriege meine Haare geschnitten.
• I’m getting my hair cut.

As you can see, it’s not tricky to understand and there’s NO problem translating this to English with to get.
The only thing that may be tricky is to see what this has to do with passive voice.
Well, in both sentences, the person actually DOING the action (delivering, cutting) is not mentioned in the sentence. And if we wanted to include them, we’d do it with von (or by), just like in a proper passive voice sentence.

• Ich kriege von Maria die Haare geschnitten.
• I’m getting my hair cut by Maria.

So what would that look like in vanilla passive?
Well, the elements that we have here are the doer (Maria), this element will stay with von. Then, we have the direct object of the action (cutting) – the hair”. And we have the recipient of the action (cutting) – me.
We learned last time that only the direct object can be the subject of a German passive sentence, so it has to be the hair. And the recipient is… in Dative. Because that’s the prime thing this case expresses.

• Mir werden die Haare geschnitten.
• I’m getting my hair cut.
  Lit: “to me, the hair is being cut.”

Now, just to make sure… this bekommen-passive is NOT a general translation for the English get-passive.

• I’m getting called.
• Ich kriege/bekomme angerufen… NOPE
• Ich werde angerufen.. YEAYY

The bekommen-passive if the setup is: someone is “receiving” some action from someone.
Here’s another example, both versions back to back.

• Dem Kind wird eine Geschichte vorgelesen. (Proper passive voice)
• A story is being read to the child. / The child is being read a story.

• Das Kind kriegt eine Geschichte vorgelesen. (pseudo-passive)
• The child gets read a story.
  (sounds rather colloquial)

Don’t worry, we’ll practice a couple of these in the quiz later on, but now let’s move on to the next Passiv-Ersatzform – the ist-zu passive.

Passiv-Ersatz – “(sich) lassen”

And we’ll start right with an example.

• Die Tür lässt sich leicht öffnen.

The closest translation is probably this:

• The door allows for itself to be opened easily.

And it’s basically a way to say this:

• The door can be opened easily.
• Die Tür kann leicht geöffnet werden.

So we basically replaced a “passive construction+können” with sich lassen. I mean… why not, right?
Actually, the sich lassen phrasing sounds quite a bit more “lively” than the corresponding passive sentence.

• Am Preis lässt sich was machen.
  “On the price, something lets itself be done.”
• Am Preis kann was gemacht werden.

The first version sounds more like “We can do something about the price.”, while the second version is more like “There’s something that can be done about the price.”. Which of the two would you choose, if you were in sales :)?
This sich lassen passive is a fairly nice phrasing and I’m sure you’ll hear it in daily life. Oh and just to make sure… the self reference is in Accusative.

• Ich lasse mich schwer überzeugen.
  (“I let myself be convinced hardly.”)
• Ich kann schwer überzeugt werden… Booooring
• I’m hard to convince.

All right.
Now, there is a second phrasing with lassen that some sources do call a Passiv-Ersatzform, while others don’t mention it.
That’s mainly because Passiv-Ersatzformen is actually a very wishy-washy concept that sounds more official than it has merit, but we’ll get back to that later.
So, here’s the phrasing with lassen, that I mean.

• Ich lasse mir die Haare schneiden.
  “I’m letting my hair be cut”
• I’m getting a haircut. / I have my hair cut.

I think it does deserve to be mentioned in a list about Passiv-Ersatzformen, because the person who actually does the action (here: the cutting) is not mentioned, and would be connected with von (by).

• Ich lasse mir von Maria die Haare schneiden.
• I’m having my hair cut by Maria.

But on the other hand, when we transform this into a proper passive sentence, it sounds and feels VERY different.

• Mir werden von Maria die Haare geschnitten.

In fact, I think a German speaker might actually struggle if you tell them to make a passive sentence out of the lassen-phrasing.
So if you fail to do this in class, keep that in mind. It’s an academic exercise that not every native speaker would just get right.

Anyway, on to the next form.
And this one is again… uhm… “”””replacing”””” a passiv-modal-construction.

Passiv-Ersatz – “ist-zu”

Take this sentence:

• Die Küche ist zu putzen.

This could be a sign in a flatshare for example and it expresses an obligation for someone, like… I don’t know … THOMAS… to clean the damn kitchen.
What makes this “passive-y” is the fact that the direct object of the action (cleaning) has the role of the subject here and if we wanted to add the “doer” to the sentence, we’d use von.

• Die Küche ist von Thomas zu putzen.

In English, it would translate to this:

• The kitchen is to be cleaned by Thomas.

And if we wanted to express the same in proper passive voice, it’d look like this:

• Die Küche muss/soll von Thomas geputzt werden.
• The kitchen must/shall/has to be cleaned by Thomas

Now, the German phrasing isn’t limited to obligations. It can also express a können-passive.

• Das Geräusch ist nicht zu hören.
• The noise can’t be heard.

Technically, it could also be the obligation, but that just wouldn’t make much sense, so people would understand this as being about potential.

So far, so good.
But now, it’s time to expose Passiv-Ersatzformen and why the concept sucks.

Passiv-Ersatzformen – Definitionally Challenged

Let’s look at the basic example again for a second.

• Die Küche ist zu putzen.
• The kitchen is to be cleaned.

Did you spot a difference?
It’s easy to miss, but in English, we have an “extra” to be in there. And THAT is actually what adds this whole notion of obligation.
In German, on the other hand, the notion of obligation is only implied, as we’ve seen.
The structure itself is the same one as in this sentence:

• Die Küche ist schwer zu putzen.
• The kitchen is hard to clean.

And now guess… is this generally considered a Passiv-Ersatzform?
No, it’s not! Even though we could technically paraphrase it as a passive sentence.
So why not? Because the reality is is that Passiv-Ersatzform, while sounding all official and formal, is a VERY vague and blurry concept that tries to point at a foggy cloud and say “That’s a distinct box, right there”!

And if you’re now like “Hmm, you’re exaggerating a bit.”, let me tell you… no I am not!
Take a look at this sentence:

• Das ist nicht zu verstehen.

This looks like the one with the kitchen we had earlier. But this time, it’s NOT about an obligation, but rather means this:

• That cannot be understood.

Why? Because context. Reading it as an obligation just wouldn’t make all that much sense.
That’s not my main point though.
My main point is this:

• Das ist schwer zu verstehen.
• This is hard to understand.

This is NOT considered a Passiv-Ersatzform, as far as I am aware.
So:

• Das ist nicht zu verstehen.
• Das ist schwer zu verstehen.

The first one is considered Passiv-Ersatz, the second isn’t. (And BOTH can be rephrased as a passive sentence)
For a normal person, this makes no sense, plain and simple.
Maybe it does, if you apply some deeper linguistic analysis, but I also bet that 90% of all German teachers will fumble around a bit and then change topic if you ask them about this.

My ranting here doesn’t change the fact that Passiv-Ersatzformen are a subject of higher level German exams. But maybe it can help you see it from a slightly different angle.
It’s just a bunch of useful phrasings that you’ll have to transform to passive voice and back and there is no obvious reason, why some phrasings belong to the group and others don’t.
Which brings us to our last and stupidest instance of Passiv-Ersatzformen – endings

German Passiv-Ersatz – Endings

Yes! Endings!

• Das ist nicht lesbar
• That is not legible.

• Der Lärm ist unerträglich.
• The noise is unbearable.

Multiple sources I have seen list endings like -bar, -abel or some instances of -lich as Passiv-Ersatzformen.
I mean, sure… we can paraphrase the examples above into a passive sentence.

• Das kann nicht gelesen werden.
• That cannot be read.

• Der Lärm kann nicht ertragen werden.
• The noise cannot be “borne”.

But especially the second one is absolutely ridiculous. No one would ever say that.
So if you had Passiv-Ersatzformen in class and you thought “This feels like it’s stupid.” then you were spot on!!

Calling an ending like “-bar” a Passiv-Ersatzform is brain dead!

And by “brain dead” I mean “creating complexity” where doesn’t need to be any.

These are just normal adjectives and I feel like giving them a label like Passiv-Ersatzform makes things WAY more complicated than they need to be. And than they are in reality.
Not a single person’s German got better thanks to this, but a lot of learners felt that subtle nagging that something feels pointless, but the teacher says it so it has to be a “thing”.
This is the stuff that kills fun, and leads to confusion.

Like I said… the concept of Passiv-Ersatzformen is not going away and you do need to learn to transform them back and forth if you want to take a C1 exam for example. But please please, don’t think of them as this high level grammatical concept.
It’s just a fairly random collection of useful phrasings that overlap with passive voice. No more, no less.

And with that, I’ll wrap it up for today.
Depending on which source you check, there are a couple more or less Passiv-Ersatzformen, but it’s best if you stick to whatever is in your textbook, because that’ll be in the exam.
And if none of this is in your textbook yet or you don’t use one… well great!! Then just pick the phrasings you liked and try to use them.

We’ll probably do a bigger exercise about this soon, particularly the Passiv-Ersatzformen. But I’ll also go over the key points again in the short little quiz today.

So yeah… that’s pretty much it.
This was our look at the quirks of the German Passive Voice and the Passiv-Ersatzformen. And why they suck.
The little quiz is waiting for you, if you want to test yourself on how much you remember.
And of course, if you have any questions or suggestions about this, or you want to mention another Passive-Ersatzform that I forgot, just leave me a comment.

I hope you liked it, and see you next time.