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In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl and Jack explain the difference between the active voice and the passive voice.
Transcript:
00:00:01
Jack
Welcome to the A-Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I’m here with my co-host social. And today we are stepping into the grammar zone and we’re going to talk about the active voice versus the passive voice. And so social when we use the active voice, that’s.
00:00:20
Jack
Tends to be our typical like subject, verb, object, sentences, right?
00:00:25
Xochitl
Yes.
00:00:26
Jack
Yeah, like the cat chased the mouse. The cat is the subject. Chased is the verb and then the object of the of the cat’s interest. What the cat is chasing is the mouse.
00:00:43
Jack
What if we?
00:00:44
Jack
Put that into the passive voice. Uhm, where we kind of basically the subject and the object are inverted. Uh, kind of reversed.
00:00:56
Jack
So for example, the mouse was chased by the cat. Can you think of like a reason why we might use that kind of construction, a passive voice?
00:01:10
Xochitl
The mouse was chased by the cat.
00:01:13
Jack
Yeah.
00:01:14
Jack
I was thinking.
00:01:15
Jack
Like we want to emphasize the the mouse instead of the cat, right?
00:01:19
Jack
We’re kind of emphasizing that, yeah, because it’s like technically it’s the object of the of the sentence in the active, you know, the cat chased the mouse. But if we want to emphasize the mouse, we can flip it around and use the passive voice. The mouse was chased by the cat.
00:01:19
Xochitl
Yeah, I was going to say.
00:01:21
Xochitl
Too again.
00:01:39
Jack
And I wanted to throw one more thing at you here. Like there’s another reason sometimes we use the passive voice and and it’s when the subject is unknown.
00:01:51
Jack
So.
00:01:52
Xochitl
Ohh.
00:01:53
Jack
Can you think I I was thinking of an example like imagine you’re, uh, you wake up in the morning, you go. I know you don’t drive, but this is a hypothetical situation. You go out, you you grab your keys, you go out to your your front front yard and your car’s gone.
00:02:13
발표자
MHM.
00:02:13
Jack
So we could use, you know, the active voice and we could say someone stole Social’s car, but we often don’t use the pronoun someone instead of instead you would come back in the house and say, oh, my gosh, my car was stolen.
00:02:33
Xochitl
Yep, Yep.
00:02:33
발표자
That’s.
00:02:34
Jack
Yeah.
00:02:36
발표자
Yeah.
00:02:37
Jack
And in the full sentence would be my car was stolen by somebody. But in this case we.
00:02:43
Jack
Just the the.
00:02:44
Jack
Subject is unknown. We don’t know who it is.
00:02:46
Xochitl
I think sometimes we do. We might come in and be like someone.
00:02:49
Xochitl
Stole my car though.
00:02:50
Jack
Yes, yes, we will say that. Yep.
00:02:54
Xochitl
Yeah. So I think that’s where that would come.
00:02:55
Xochitl
Into play.
00:02:56
Jack
Yes, yes, I and and again this this is the the whole point of like active and passive voice is that you get to choose the style that you and tone that you want to use I think.
00:03:08
Jack
This is. That’s why I’m not like a a huge fan of teaching this kind of grammar to my students who are beginners because they it just confuses them. But for students that are like a little bit higher level and want to make their writing a little bit more interesting, I think the passive voice.
00:03:17
발표자
So.
00:03:29
Jack
Can be a useful a useful tool, but but it’s definitely not necessary. Definitely not necessary. You could just say someone stole my car, yeah.
00:03:40
Xochitl
Yes.
00:03:41
Jack
Yeah.
00:03:43
Jack
And umm, I’m also thinking like in the newspaper. Uh, this is very common in like headlines.
00:03:51
Jack
Am I wrong about that? I’m thinking like.
00:03:55
Xochitl
Like.
00:03:58
Xochitl
Like, yeah, like yes, because you would say an office building was burned down by 27 year old male instead of a 27 year old male burned in an office building or something.
00:04:06
Jack
Yes, exactly.
00:04:10
Jack
Right, right. Or you just might say like an office building, but an office building was burned down yesterday.
00:04:17
Jack
You know, and we they don’t know who the perpetrator is. The person that did it. And so you, you again unknown subject. We can just use the passive voice. An office building was burned down and elderly woman was murdered last night in the park. You know something like that.
00:04:17
Xochitl
Yes.
00:04:38
Jack
Sorry for these dark examples everybody but.
00:04:43
Jack
It it tends to be like in crime, you know, crime pages like that, those kinds of headlines, I think.
00:04:48
Xochitl
Right, yes.
00:04:50
Jack
Yeah.
00:04:51
Jack
OK. Well, I think we’ve we’ve pretty much dug ourselves.
00:04:56
Jack
Well, we we put ourselves in a grammar hole, but I think we dug ourselves out mostly in this. Yeah.
00:05:01
Xochitl
Mostly yes. Alright, listeners, if you have any further questions, any grammar questions that you want to shoot our way, make sure to leave a comment down below at AZ englishpodcast.com. Shoot us an e-mail at AZ englishpodcast@gmail.com and join our WeChat WhatsApp groups to join the conversation. See you guys next time.
00:05:21
Xochitl
Bye.
00:05:22
발표자
Bye bye.
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