But who is it that loves the film? Our imaginary friend Ellen! When adding the subject, you need to choose between par and de. But if you need to indicate who ate the mac ‘n cheese, or in our example, who adores the film, then proceed to the next step. In English, you could very well say “The macaroni and cheese was eaten.” And you can do the same thing in French. This could be considered a complete thought. Putting our first two steps together, so far we have: Use to find the past participles for verbs if you’re still learning them, but for our verb adorer, you simply drop the -er and add -é to make adoré. If you aren’t familiar with the past participle, it’s the form of the verb you use when forming the past tense and other compound tenses. In order to use the passive voice, you’ll need the correct form of the conjugated verb être (je suis, tu es, il/elle est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont) and the past participle of the verb in question. You probably noticed in the passive voice examples that our little friend êtremade an appearance. In the passive voice, the agent will go in the place where you usually put the subject of the sentence. To go from the active voice to the passive voice, our object (“the film”) will now become our agent. In the active sentence, Ellen is the subject and the object is le film. The object is what our subject performs the verb (adorer) on (i.e. We’ll reverse engineer it and start with a sentence in the active voice, with which you’re already familiar: Time for us to break it down! Basic Formation of the French Passive Voice But first, here are a few examples to get you familiar: The passive voice is when the action of the verb is performed on the subject by the agent.ĭon’t run away! We’ll learn about agents (not to be confused with secret agents) and all that jazz below. The gem of this post, finally! Since you will use and come across this voice the least often of these three, you’re likely less familiar with it. Since we’re only focusing on the passive voice in this post (geeze! I can’t do everything all at once!), if you wan’t to learn more about the pronominal voice, check out this post. Not only do you have the subject and the verb, but a reflexive pronoun (in bold, above) which indicates that the verb is being done to the subject. The reflexive pronouns are not to be ignored or you’ll misunderstand altogether! Here’s how it works: This one is particularly important to have a handle on in comprehension. You may be familiar with this voice if you’ve spent any time with reflexive verbs. This is where the subject is doing the verb to itself. The second most common voice (more so in French than in English) is the pronominal voice. All we’re focused on is the relationship between the subject and verb in this voice. The subject is performing the verb, and as for the rest of the sentence, there can be a direct object, no direct object, an adjective, a bunch of details, doesn’t matter. In the active voice, the subject performs the action, like so: In both French and English, active voice is the most common. Before we can be passive, we need to be active… and pronominal? Eh, the puns aren’t too great with this topic. (Download) The Ultimate Guide to the French Passive Voice The Three Voices of FrenchĪlthough this post is about the passive voice, in order to understand what it means and when it’s used, we’ll learn about the three voices. So let’s do this.ĭownload: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬan take anywhere. Voice shows up in your French reading, listening comprehension, writing, and well… everything. Plus, don’t you want to be all-knowing? Yes, you do. If it has snuck past you after all this time learning French, today’s your lucky day, because we’re shining the spotlight on the passive voice! Voice is simply the relationship between the subject and verb in a sentence. (Though by all means, speak French in as many accents and funny voices as you can manage!) To be clear, though, this is not the accent you’ll be using to speak French. So if you haven’t heard of the French passive voice yet, don’t fret-it can be a bit sneaky that way. By Marissa Macy Last updated: OctoHow the Passive Voice Is Used in French
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |