German Learning Resources

German offers various other constructions to the passive voice which retain (close to) the same effect. 

The Zustandspassiv can be constructed in all six tenses of the Indicative mood and all eight tenses of the Subjunctive mood. Its Present construction in the Imperative mood is also preferred over the form used in the Vorgangspassiv . This list attempts to be exhaustive. To see which forms are commonly used, click here . Note : English uses to be to form both its version of the Vorgangspassiv and the Zustandspassiv (or stative and dynamic passive). This means that context is often required to understand which is being used and, similar to German, some forms are rarely, if ever, used. The English translations provided below are therefore more of a guide than an exact translation. Indicative The Indicative ( der Indikativ ) mood is essentially the default mood. When someone is not giving a command (Imperative) or trying to indicate that something is not necessarily fact (Subjunctive), then they are using the Indicative mood. Present   Das Fenster ist geschlossen.    The wind

The passive voice with werden ( Vorgangspassiv ) refers to the process of an action; it indicates that an action is taking place. The resulting state of this action can be indicated with a different version of the passive voice called the Stative Passive ( Zustandspassiv ). This form uses sein instead of werden as its auxiliary verb.

Several prepositions can be used to indicate something about the action described in the passive voice. These are: the preposition for indicating the agent ( von); for indicating the means ( durch ); and for indicating the instrument ( mit ).

The previous lesson demonstrated how to correctly order verbs in a sentence and showed that comprehension of a German sentence relies more on understanding and recognising the cases rather than word order. Word order is much more flexible in German: elements can be moved around in a German sentence (excluding the finite verb) without affecting the overall meaning of a sentence.

The majority of transitive verbs can be used in the passive voice. A transitive verb is a verb which governs one or more objects. For example, in the sentence below, the verb  ausfüllen requires an accusative object, which is das Formular .