Let's see if we can distinguish between
the active and the passive voice, and
that's a distinction that applies to
verbs. So if we look at the first example
here: "A Russian oligarch bought my
Ferrari" -- not something you say every day ...
well, here we have a verb ("bought"), and this
one is active because the subject ("a
Russian oligarch") is actively doing the
action. It's not happening to the
oligarch. It's the oligarch doing
the action. If we want to make it passive,
then we typically take the object (so
that's "my Ferrari") and now the
action is going to happen to our new
subject. So we say "was bought."
The Ferrari is not doing the buying, but the
action happens to our subject. And then
we take our previous subject and we make
it the object, if we want to include it.
Now to do that we include this little
preposition "by." So this is the most
common construction -- you can call this a
"by construction," and we write "It was
bought by a Russian oligarch."
And that's all there is to it,
so the passive voice, then, is formed from
two parts: the first part is the verb "be" (to be),
and the second part is the past
participle. And if you look at this
example here, you'll see that the past
participle will never change. It will
always stay the same, but you can change
the verb "to be." So you could say "is
bought," "was bought," "will be bought" -- all of
these are fine, and they just change the
tense of the ...
passive voice. Okay, so now that
we know the basic distinction, let's go
through a few more variations here, and
we'll see some other interesting things
about the active and the passive voice.
The next two examples show that this "by
construction" doesn't always have to be
added, so the real subject may not
actually be stated in these sentences.
You will also notice that "got" ...
(so both of these are passive voice verbs) .... that "got" sometimes replaces
"to be." That's fairly rare, but it's a more
casual approach, so if you say "My car got
vandalized," you could also say "My car was
vandalized." That's just something to watch
out for. The next thing to notice is that
often the active voice is much more
direct, and sometimes it's even awkward
to use the passive voice. If you were to
turn this into the passive voice, you
would say "a new chair" (so here's our
new subject) -- a new chair was bought by
Karen." And you can hear that sounds
pretty awkward. So I would suggest you
just stick with with the active voice.
Some teachers go overboard and they say
you should correct this all the time: if
you see the passive voice, change it
because the active voice is more direct.
It's quicker, more succinct. I think that's a bit
over the top, and the
passive voice does have its uses. So if
you look at the next two examples, we see
a couple of uses of the passive voice.
First of all, if you use the passive
voice because you don't know who the
actual subject, is or if you simply want
to draw attention to your new subject,
that's completely fine. And you can see
here that maybe you don't know who
called off the game. Maybe it was the
referee, maybe it was some official. If
you don't know, that's fine -- you just use
the passive voice and you can avoid that
question. Or if it doesn't really matter,
and you want to draw attention, as
mentioned, to your new subject, you can do
that as well. Another place where the
passive voice is commonly used is in
academic writing, so in academic prose.
You don't want to overdo this, but in
academic prose the passive voice makes
your writing sound a little bit more
abstract. You have to be careful with
that, because if you're only doing it to
make yourself sound smart, that's not
a good enough reason. It really does have
to have a purpose. If you look at this
example here -- if you're writing let's say
a history about the bikini, and you don't
really care who named
the bikini (you're more interested in the
naming itself) well maybe you can use the
passive voice here. If you do care then
you can obviously change this around and
you can see that it's really up to you
ultimately. Incidentally, you might be
interested to know that the bikini was
named in the 1940s (late 1940s) after the
atomic testing that was taking
place at the Bikini Atoll. The reason
was that the inventor, or that the person
who coined the name at least, felt that
the bikini was going to be equally
explosive. So there you go. Speaking of
essays, you'll often find this
construction "I will argue" at the
beginning of a thesis statement. Some
people like to write "it will be argued"
which is much more
cumbersome, much more abstract I think. I
would stay away from that. It's quite an
awkward passive construction. At the same
time, though, you'll find that in some
disciplines people disapprove of the use
of "I." For instance, a lot of history
teachers will prefer that you don't use
"I" and that you write in a more abstract voice.
The reason is that they think that
sounds more objective, which I really
think is rubbish, but you know that's up
to them I suppose. So there's the
difference. Try to avoid these really
awkward constructions, but, you know,
sometimes perhaps they're inevitable. The
last point to mention is that some
people disapprove of mixing the two
voices in the same sentence, and you can
see here that we have the active voice
to start out with, and then we switch to
the passive voice later on. You can make
them the same if you like, so you could
say, let's see here, "Ken's culinary
creations impressed the judges, and they
... offered
him a million-dollar salary to work in
Shanghai." So that would make them both
active, for example, but you know that's
kind of overkill. I don't think it's a
big deal here, so it's really up to you.
If you think it's going to be a
problem, and you think making them the
same will be more stylish, then do it, but
the biggest thing to take away for
this video is just awareness. Be aware of
which voice you're using and whether
it's appropriate given the circumstances.