Hello everyone
And welcome to a new episode of the epic YourDailyGerman online grammar course.
And today, we have the long awaited fourth part of the series on
German Passive Voice
If you stumbled across this and you haven’t read the other parts yet, you can find them here:
- Passive in German 1 – An Overview
(An overview over my approach) - Passive in German 2 – The Details
(Basically how to use the werden-passive) - Passive in German 3 – Interactive Exercise
(An AI based practice bot for German Passive)
Now that we know the basics and how to build the normal passive in German, it’s time to look into all the nooks and crannies of the topic.
That means, we’ll collect all the quirky side forms and uses that German and English have and thereby discover some significant differences between the two languages.
Today, we’ll focus on all the “specials” of English passive and see how we can express them in German.
So even if you’re a beginner in German still, it might be interesting you get to see a few things about English that you likely never really thought about.
So if you’re ready, let’s hop right in.
English has some ways of using passive that are kind of unique. Or at least they do not exist in German in that way.
And we’ll start with what’s maybe the biggest difference – the recipient-passive.
The English “recipient”- passive
If you don’t know what the recipient-subject is, that’s because I made up the term. I don’t know what the real name is or if there even is one.
But here’s what I mean.
In “normal” passive (the one that most people think of and that we’ve discussed up to this point in this series) we basically turn the direct object of an action into the subject.
In the recipient-passive, it’s the INDIRECT object that ostensibly gets turned into the subject.
Take this sentence:
- The unicorn gave me a letter. (active)
The unicorn is the subject here, the letter is the direct object and I am the recipient (indirect object).
Now, here’s the normal passive of this sentence:
- A letter was given to me by the unicorn.
The subject is now the letter, the unicorn is some boring preposition object, and I am still the recipient and indirect object.
And now, let’s check the recipient-passive:
- I was given a letter by the unicorn.
Do you see what I mean? I’m of course still the one getting the letter, so I’m still the recipient, but grammatically, I now have the role of the subject.
And this is not English oddly using “I” instead of “to me” because it’s at the beginning of a sentence.
We can see that this, if we use a plural:
- We were given a special task.
- To us was given a special task.
(I kept the word order to make it more obvious,
even though it sounds theatrical)
In the first sentence, the verb matches with we (“we were”) while in the second it matches with task (“a task was”). So the subjects are really different in both sentences.
So yeah, this is what I call the recipient-passive, and the reason we dedicate time to it is … it doesn’t work in German.
Like, at all.
- I was given a book.
If you just learned how to use passive voice in German, you might be really tempted to say something like this.
- Ich wurde ein Buch gegeben.
This makes no sense to a German speaker. I mean, they might be able to figure out what you mean, but there is no guarantee.
In German, the indirect object (which would be the Dative object) cannot be turned into the subject like that.
So how to translate the English version?
Well, it’s actually pretty simple… you put the recipient first, but you leave it in Dative.
- Mir wurde ein Buch gegeben.
- I was given a book.
(lit.: “To me, a book was given.”) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
These two are very similar actually. Same word order, same emphasis on the person. The only difference is that the subject in English is “I” while in German, it’s “ein Buch”.
Let’s look at a few more examples.
- Warum wurde mir kein Kuchen gegeben?
- Why wasn’t I given cake?
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Dem Investor wurden hohe Gewinne versprochen.
- The investor was promised high returns.
(Lit.: “to the inverstor”…)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- Uns wurde nur eine Stunde gegeben, um zu entscheiden.
- We were given only one hour to decide.
(lit.: “to us”…)
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Mir wurde gesagt, dass ich heute frei habe.”
“Von wem?”
“Meiner Frau.”
“Die arbeitet nicht mal hier.” - “I was told that I have the day off today.”
“By whom?”
“My wife.”
“She doesn’t even work here.” - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
As you can see, the phrasings are really really similar in structure. I mean, the grammatical subjects are different in both languages, but kind of analytical. The only difference that’s visible on the surface is the Dative.
That is very important though, because like I said… I’m not sure people would understand if you got that wrong.
It’s hard to convey how weird it would feel to a German, if you were to use ich instead of mir in the last example.
Maybe a bit like this sentence:
- Why wasn’t I explained that problem?
Not sure if that is proper English or “technically” proper English or if it’s wrong.
But to me it feels odd in a way similar to something like “Ich wurde ein Buch gegeben.”… just that the German example is much stronger, and not just odd but WRONG.
So yeah, you need to get used to starting a sentence with Dative in German when you do passive voice.
But at least if you’re already a bit more advanced you’re somewhat familiar with the “feel” of that, from phrasings like “Mir ist langweilig” (I’m bored) or “Mir gefällt das nicht.” (I don’t like that). Those are NOT passive voice, of course, but the flow when speaking is kind of the same.
Now, we’ll actually kind of circle back to the issue of what can and can’t become the subject of a passive sentence in the next episode. But that is closely connected to a core quirk about the German passive, so I’d like to… ahem… “table that” for now.
Yeah, channeling my inner scrum master here. Emanuel, what’s for the rest of the day?
“So today, I am focusing on the quirks of the English passive and how to translate them, and there are two more phrasings that we need to look at, that I haven’t covered yet.”
Sounds great. Do you have a headline yet?
“No, but hired some talent on Upwork and they’ll send me something soon.”
Great.
Two Quirky English Passive Phrasings (And why you should)
Wow, absolute fire!! And the best thing is, I can pocket the $100 budget that I had for the headline. Thanks ChatGPT, you’re the best.
“You’re welcome. Feel free to reach out any time if you need more catchy headlines or information about furry cospla..”
Aaaanyways, after this little outburst of insanity, let’s get back to actual grammar.
And the first phrasing of English passive that doesn’t work 1:1 in German is what we could call infintive-passive.
Or let’s call it “… to be done”-passive, actually. That’s a bit more intuitive.
Anyway, here’s what I mean:
- Thomas, I want this to be cleaned.
- We expect the coffee machine to be repaired.
German learners sometimes try to translate these and they come up with something like this:
- Thomas, ich will das geputzt zu werden.
or this
- Thomas, ich will das geputzt zu sein.
Or something similar.
But none of that works.
What you need here is a good old boring dass-sentence.
- Thomas – Ich will, dass das geputzt wird.
(Thomas, I want that that is getting cleaned.) - Wir erwarten, dass die Kaffeemaschine repariert wird.
(We are expecting that the coffee machine gets repaired.)
Now, the reason why the direct translation doesn’t work is not the to-construction per se.
It’s the fact that the German zu-construction wants the subject in both halves of the sentence to be the same.
Here’s a classic example for a zu-phrase:
- Ich habe versucht, dich anzurufen.
- I tried to call you.
In both parts of the sentence, the person acting is me. I am “trying” and I’d be doing the calling.
Now let’s take a passive examples again:
- The hotel manager is expecting the rooms to be cleaned.
In the first part, the subject is the hotel manager. He or she is “doing” the expecting. But the subject in the second part (the passive part) is “the rooms”. So the subjects don’t match and THAT’S why a zu-construction won’t work, and we instead need a dass-sentence.
- Der Manager erwartet, dass die Zimmer geputzt werden.
Now, take a look at this example:
- I expect to be invited.
Here, the subjects DO match. I am the one hoping, and I am the one who might “be invited”.
And this does work in German.
- Ich erwarte, eingeladen zu werden.
Me personally, I think I would still prefer the dass-sentence here, but grammatically this is fine.
But if we switch out the person to be invited, it doesn’t work.
- I expect Maria to be invited.
- Ich erwarte Maria eingeladen zu werden…. makes no sense
- Ich erwarte, dass Maria eingeladen wird…. way to go
Cool. So that was the first little quirk of English passive.
And the second one are phrasings like this:
- Maria had her bike stolen at the train station.
This is kind of what German grammar calls “Passiv-Ersatz-Form”. So it’s some form or phrasing that expresses a passive, without really being a classic passive.
German has a few of such phrasings too, and we’ll get to know them in the next episode, but none of them really lines up with the example above.
Instead, what we’d use is the so called Gödel-Schrödinger-Insertion – a very complicated expression that is maybe a bit too complicated for today.
Okay, nah… I’m kidding.
You’d just use plain old normal vanilla passive.
- Maria wurde am Bahnhof ihr Fahrrad gestohlen.
- Maria had her bike stolen at the train staion.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
And just to make sure… the examples LOOK the same, but structurally, they’re not. In the English sentence, Maria is the subject. In the German version, she is in Dative case. Pretty much the same structure as we had earlier with “I was given” vs “Mir wurde gegeben”.
The name Maria doesn’t show it, but you can see it when you replace the name with a pronoun.
- Ihr wurde … gestohlen.
- She had …. stolen.
Now, some of you that already have some experience with passive in German and who have gone over it in the German course might be like “Wait, isn’t this an instance where we could use the lassen-passive?”
But the lassen-passive is a bit too intentional. Or at least negligent.
But all that and more is actually what we’ll talk about in the next episode when we look the quirks of the German passive and the Passiv-Ersatz-Formen.
For today, we’ve done enough, I think, so let’s wrap this up.
If you want to check how much you remember and do some practice examples for, just take the little quiz I have prepared for you.
And of course, if you have any questions or suggestions, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
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if i want to say: I expect that i shall be informed at least one hour in advance. Ich erwarte, dass mir zumindest eine Stunde vorher informiert werden soll. Is this correct ? The sentence correction toll giving me this answer — Ich erwarte, dass ich zumindest eine Stunde vorher informiert werde.
The sentence correction tool is right.
You’re the one who is expecting and you’re the one who “is informed”. You’re the subject of both verbs.
In your version with “mir”, you’re NOT the subject, so it’s completely unclear who is informed.
If you want to use “mir”, you could say this:
– Ich erwarte, dass mir mindestens eine Stunde im Voraus Bescheid gesagt wird.
Now you’re the indirect object and the subject role is filled by “Bescheid”.
Does that help?
I’m not convinced about the example “Maria had her bike stolen at the train station.”
“to have *sth* *verb*ed” implies it was a conscious choice, so in this case Maria arranged for someone to steal her bike, presumably to claim the insurance money or something. But the German version seems to suggest Maria had little or no influence over the situation. For me these translations fit better:
But it’s also very possible I’ve misunderstood the point of what you were trying to say with these examples
– Maria hat sich das Rad am Bahnhof stehlen lassen.
This has a double meaning actually, so it could be intentional, as you described or it could be about how it was genuinely stolen. Phrasing it this way then does imply some sort of stupidity or negligence though, at least slightly.
I did a quick search for “I had my car broken into” and it seems like some people at least do use the phrasing for unintentional events. Maybe it’s a regional thing?
Yeah true, it could well be regional!
Hi Emanuel! Great article! I have just one question I stumbled upon as I was learning:
Take the sentence:
Now I know that helfen asks for a dative after it (Ich helfe dir) so it makes sense that in a passive construction “allen Menschen” is a dative. But why use this conjugation “wird”.?
As I stated “allen Menschen” is not the subject so the verb doesn’t change according to it. But still why is it like that? And even trickier is, who is the subject here? (my guess is that it is not present, but can it be added?)
If I said : Mir wird ein Brief geschickt. (same dative kind of construction) “Brief” is the subject, but in the previous example I have no idea.
(My language uses accusative after the verb “to help”, so I guess this is why I am so confused about this whole ordeal)
Examples like these will be one topic of the final part of this series, which is coming soon.
Spoiler: there is NO subject to be found here. It doesn’t exist. And you can’t add one because helfen doesn’t take a direct object in active, so there’s nothing that could be turned into subject.
With “schicken” it’s different. That verb CAN take a direct object, so it can also take a subject in passive.
You could have included ‘es’ es wird hier…
That’s not the subject though, it’s just a filler.
ChatGPTSomebody gave me the sentence “Vor 50 Jahren wurde der Mond betreten.” I’m a bit dubious of that “der.” Based on your article it seems to be … correct? The subject retains its subject-ness here? I don’t know why it’s not “landing” for me, I guess in this particular case it just seems like an action being inflicted on something so much that it’s hard to see the moon as a subject.It’s the grammatical subject, but of course it doesn’t feel like it is doing anything.
I think the reason it’s not “landing” might be that you don’t have a verb equivalent to “betreten” and you’d do something like “was landed on/was stepped on”
But what about this:
– The moon was discovered in 1878.
Does that feel natural? Because in essence, the moon isn’t doing anything here either.
Oh yeah, that clarifies it. I can’t make betreten anything except for “was treaded upon.” Thanks!
My first perfect score. Yea me. Thank you for completing the “question” of question 1 as the answer in question 2. Nothing is more frustrating than being given a translation question, but not (at some point) being given the correct answer to make sure that what is in your mind is correct. (wow, THAT would be an epic german translation). The Dass construction sounds natural in my mind (finally!) and I still default to it in sentences that start “Ich denke/glaube” usw – I am right that one doesn’t need dass in those structures, right? On another note, after re-subscribing 3 times, I had enough and just got the lifetime membership. This site has been, and still is, a very important part of my Deutschkenntniss. Danke dir!
Oh nice!!! Glückwunsch zur 100. Sehr gut, und vor allem bei diesem Thema!
You’re right that you don’t really need the dass-structure after “glaube, denke”
– Ich glaube, er kommt zu spät.
– Ich glaube, dass er zu spät kommt.
The first one is more common, I think (in spoken). Also works with “sagen” and a few others btw.
Oh and welcome aboard forever :)
Hallo!
My question doesn’t concern the lesson on the German passive voice but on your most recent lesson, “sammeln.” As I was reading the introduction to it on my phone, somehow I managed to lose it. I thought that it had gone to TRASH, but that was not the case. How doI obtain it then? Can you resend it to me or must I get it another way?
Thanks.
I guess you’re referring to the newsletter, right?
Generally, you can find ALL the past newsletters in the newsletter archive :)
https://yourdailygerman.com/newsletter-archive/
The one for “sammeln” is not there yet, because it is not completely sent out yet.
So that might take a few days.
If you mean the article itself, you can always find the most recent articles on the homepage.
Here’s the direct link to “sammeln”
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-sammeln-zusammen/
Vielen Dank!
I have always struggled with German Passive – your explanations have been very helpful – Thank you!
Freut mich sehr :)!
Hi Emanuel, great post, but question.
How come “I was asked to do that,” becomes “ich wurde gefragt, das zu tun?“
Thanks!
Happy to help but could you please clarify, what exactly you want me to clear up there?
I don’t see anything special, so let me know what’s causing confusion, so I can understand :)
Oh sorry, my question is why it takes the nominative ich instead of the accusative Mich. My understanding is that fragen takes the accusative.
Thanks!
Ah, yes it does, but this is a passive sentence, so the direct (Accusative) object is the subject now (and hence in Nomintive)
Does that help?
Okay understood! Thanks!
English word order always gets in the way. I realized that I need to think about the verb first, and then how all the other components relate to the verb.
Would you say that’s how it should be done?
Thanks again!
I think that’s a good approach to analyzing a sentence :)
Hi, a few minor points:
“Mir gefällt das nicht.” (I like that) -> I !don’t! like that.
‘in both halfs of the sentence’ -> halves
‘Maria wurde am Bahnhof ihr Fahrrad gestohlen.’ – I think it’d be helpful to repeat the ‘Mir wurde ein Buch gegeben’ example here, just to drive home the point that ‘Maria’ is not the subject, but the indirect object in dative.
Thanks :)
Thank you for this post and the people who made a subscription possible for people like me who cannot afford to learn German!
we were just learning about passive in my german class today :) Great timing!!
Definitely do check my whole series. I have a slightly different take on it that they do in class.
Hallo alle zusammen,
This is my first comment! my request to be sponsored has been approved by Emanuel. Subsequently, i was granted access for a whole year!
As a refugee that has recently fled from a -still very active- war zone, i do not currently possess the financial means to pay for a subscription. So, i would really like to thank our beloved teacher Emanuel as well as the community of donors that make it possible for people like me to have this opportunity to learn german and further pursue their dreams.
I used to work as a physician and aspire to work again as such in Germany.
I am truly grateful to finally be part of this wholesome community. So again, Thanks alot guys!
Und viel spass beim Lernen!
Hello,
I would like to thank everyone who is behind this blog and everyone who financially contributed towards making it possible for us who can’t afford subscribing, I am truly grateful that I got the chance to keep on learning and that wouldn’t have been possible without your generous donations, I can’t emphasize enough on how happy I am.
Thank you all!
Thank you for your hard work!
And Everyone else who made this access possible for me and many others!
“Mir gefällt das nicht.” (I like that), should be I like that not, or I don’t like that, right?
Oh, yes. Danke dir!
Hallo,
Dir werden ein paar Typos gezeigt!
Article text:
Maria eingeladen zu werden…. make no sense (Maria eingeladen zu werden…. makes no sense)
we’ll get to know them the next episode (we’ll get to know them in the next episode)
Quiz question 1: “I given good advice” (I was given good advice)
Quiz question 3: “Gegeben wird mir guter Rat” (Gegeben wurde mir guter Rat)
Quiz question 4: “It might not immediately obvious” (“It might not be immediately obvious”)
Although I think I already get this topic, you have an uncanny knack for making complicated issues appear simple :))))
Bis bald!
Danke dir :)!!
Thank You Emanuel and the German learning community for sponsoring for my membership. I really really appreciate your help, due to which I can learn German on my own.
I am so happy that: you will have more to say about “lassen” next time as, like the subjunctive in spanish, it’s a real bane in the neck;
and
you are offering lifetime memberships.
I imagine only having maybe 20 good years left, 30 if the drugs kick in, but it’s still a heck of a deal (provided you eat your vegetables in proper mass quantities too).
Actually, I have a two parter on “lassen” specifically, if you haven’t seen that yet.
And I did a quick do-over of that article recently, so it’s not that dusty.
https://yourdailygerman.com/lassen-meaning-german/
Thanks for the link – those previous sections are quite extensive!
Not over-thinking ‘lassen” has helped me understand it in real-time.
You pick up the verb combos which do not imply intent as such.
But then, say, when you drop a glass on purpose, you have to add an “absichtlich” to make that distinction, correct?
Ich habe das Glas absichtlich fallen lassen.. oder?
Now thinking about “had something happen” in English.. hmmm
I had my bike stolen.
It could be a simple description – bike gone, wow.
or it could mean:
I had my bike (intentionally) stolen…a passively-aggressive form.
It’s tricky!
Dropping on purpose can also be contextual.
Here, it’s clear that I’d do it on purpose, so adding “absichtlich” would sound weird.
Generally, you’d only add it if the context does NOT strongly suggest the direction.
Because of your series on passive, I’m really trying to use more passive in my German instead of always using the “man” construction. In English it is just so engrained, that we should avoid using passive (or, passive should be avoided?)
The reminder about the Dativ phrasing is also very helpful. I always feel like I am saying something wrong with phrases like “mir ist kalt” or “mir ist langweilig”. Like, I know it’s the rule but I can’t quite believe people say it.
The “mir-passive” is definitely quite common also in spoken. For the “normal” passive I am actually not sure if it’s more common in German than it is in English. It can easily sound a bit technical.
I’d love to hear some impressions from English natives who have been living in Germany for a while already (low key summoning Berlingrabers :D)
I suspect that most Americans use passive more often than I do. I spent way too many years in school. Most of the Germans I speak with also have Dr. In their titles, so I’m sure it isn’t a very representative group.
ha
I’d say passive generally is more common here than in English. As Jeffrey says, (at least American) schools hammer into your head that passive is Bad Style, where I feel like somewhat technical-sounding German is… still pretty common. But now I’m totally second-guessing my impression. I’ll be on a trip back to the US in a couple of weeks and will probably now be obsessively listening for passive voice, lol
“(at least American) schools hammer into your head that passive is Bad Style”
That’s interesting! I don’t recall anything about that from German school. I mean the high school though. In university papers and the like, using passive is HIGHLY encouraged. You’re taught to make the person basically disappear, as it shouldn’t matter for science who does something, but only “what was done”.
My master’s thesis was criticized for sometimes sounding “too journalistic”, as I had put some very subtle quips in there or just a personal touch.
Haha, yeah, totally the opposite in English – although it’s probably different in science fields when you’re talking about experimental procedure etc. In liberal arts/humanities fields, though, passive voice really can muddle your description of who said or did what. It can be a shortcut for not finding/citing sources, that kind of thing, and sometimes
it’s usedstudents use it to sound technical/fancy and pad their word count unnecessarily.Of course, it can always get out of hand – as a writing tutor, I remember sometimes seeing students contorting themselves to avoid using any past participle with “be,” even if it was functionally just an adjective.
Even in science fields, we would try to find ways to avoid passive in technical writing.
For history, there is a whole movement dedicated to trying to rewrite history in the active voice since passive is often used to gloss over who was committing the atrocities.
Passiv: In den USA wurden die Afrikaner zur arbeit gezwungen.
Aktiv: Weiße Amerikaner haben die Afrikaner zur Arbeit gezwungen.
So in a technical thesis, when describing your experiment, you’d still say “I did this, then heated the probe and then I took three samples.”?
Because in German that would certainly be “This was done, then the probe was heated and three samples were taken.”
It is considered bad form to say “I”, so we’d always write “we did that, then heated the probe and took three samples”. This”we” is so common that even papers with only one author would use it.
Although, in a list of steps you might write “the probe was then heated” which is the weaker descriptive passive.
Oh wow, that would feel REALLY awkward to me in German :D
Good point about science vs humanities. My thesis is in science even though it has a component of humanities and the part about my personal opinions was what they liked the most about my thesis.
But yeah, it’s possible that the humanities are a bit more lenient with passive voice than the sciences.
Fascinating that this is so engrained into English speakers that they even overcorrect like you described.
Oh yes. Similar is the “Don’t say me” engrained, i.e. to forestall “Me and him want some money to go to the carnival.” that you will constantly hear the likes of “Just between you and I…”
Part of it just depends, too. I did humanities and science in undergrad. Maybe I just got lucky, but the professors didn’t care if I used passive. I don’t think I used it a ton, but I didn’t try to avoid it.
Work is the same way. Sometimes passive just fits. And sometimes you can get away with pretty casual writing. Which is not at all how I used to picture legal writing, but sometimes you have to do it so people can understand your story. I write stuff like this all the time for settlement discussions:
– Some employees never got to see their timesheets at all. The supervisors would fill them out and forge employees’ signatures.
True story, btw, and not that uncommon.
Wow, that does sound straight up like from a news article, especially the “at all”.
I’m not sure who this is written for and for what context but I’d say technically the “at all” is not necessary as there already is “never”, so it kind of adds emphasis and I’d think that legal writing would avoid that.
But I don’t really know.
Yeah, it’s for emphasis. I usually don’t write like that in formal documents that a judge will read. But things can be pretty informal when you hire a mediator to help you try to settle a case.
You might have to give them 5 years worth of information, but they only have like a day to wrap their head around it. So being too formal doesn’t help. Short and punchy is the name of the game. It surprised me too at first, but now I like it. It’s not always easy to tell a complex story in a simple way.