Passive verbs in Latin are often where people give up and say “Latin is too hard!”, but you are not going to give up on my watch!
I love passive verbs, and I'm going to tell you why today.
What is a Passive Verb?
To show what a passive verb is, let’s look at these two sentences:
The king saw the messenger.
The messenger was seen by the king.
These sentences effectively mean the same thing, but grammatically they are different.
In the first, the king is the nominative. He's in charge of the verb. The messenger is the accusative.
In the second sentence however, the messenger has become the nominative. The messenger is the grammatical subject of that sentence. Now, the king is in the ablative case - “by the king”. He's an ablative of agent. He's the one doing the passive verb.
These differences are because the sentences use different voices of verb. In the first sentence, “saw” is an active verb. In the second, “was seen” is a passive verb.
OK, what about Passives in Latin?
Here are the same sentences, but in Latin:
rex nuntium vidit.
nuntius a rege visus est.
In the first, rex is the nominative and nuntium is the accusative. This sentence is in the active voice: vidit is an active verb. “The king saw the messenger”.
In the second, nuntius has become the nominative. a rege is ablative - “by the king”, an ablative of agent. And for the verb, visus est is passive. “The messenger was seen by the king.”
What does this mean?
For active verbs, the subject does the action, but for passive verbs, the subject actually has the action done to them, they are a passive figure in the sentence. This is different to how we've learnt verbs work.
Active verbs: the nominative does the action and this accusative receives the action.
Passive verbs: the nominative is the one receiving the action.
This can sound a little bit complicated, but once you get your head around it, it actually becomes really simple, and I'm sure you'll love passive verbs just as much as I do!
Forming Passive Verbs in Latin
We actually have two different ways to form passive verbs, depending on which tense we need. There are ones that are formed with the present stem, and there are ones that are formed from the perfect passive participle.
Using the Present Stem
The 3 tenses that use the present stem are:
the present
the imperfect passive
the future passive
They all use the first principle part in your dictionaries.
captivi in foro necantur. “The prisoners are being killed in the forum”.
This verb, necantur, is happening now. It's present tense, and it is also passive. It's a present passive: “are being killed”. -ntur is my third person, plural, ending for passive verbs.
The prisoners are the nominative of that sentence. They are receiving the action. I know it's a nominative plural, captivi.
rex gladiis pugnabatur. “The king was being attacked with swords”.
This is an imperfect passive. It's not happening now, it was happening in the past. -batur tells me it's imperfect (with the -ba- imperfect signifier we expect) and it's a third person singular ending.
The king is the grammatical nominative, he “was being attacked”.
nos Romani numquam vincemur. “We Romans never will be defeated”.
This is the future passive. vincemur is in the passive voice and the future tense.
It uses the present stem with the future signifier and -mur, which is the passive ending for the first person plural.
So these all use the present stem: present, imperfect, and future passives.
Passive Endings
All tenses use the present stem use the same person endings:
-r, -ris, -tur, -mur, -mini, -ntur.
This set of endings is a really good one to chant. It sounds really good out loud. These are added to the three tenses of verbs we just saw.
Present Passive Verbs:
first principle part + passive endings
portar: “I am being carried”
portaris: “you are being carried”
portatur: “he is being carried”
portamur: “we are being carried”
portamini: “you are being carried”
portantur: “they are being carried”
Imperfect Passive Verbs
first principle part + -ba- + passive endings
portabar: “I was being carried”
portabaris: “You were being carried”
… etc
Future Passive Verbs
The future is a little bit more complicated because you have two different ways to form the future, depending on conjugation. But again, you just use the present stem plus the future signifier and those passive endings.
first principle part + future signifier + passive endings
portabor: “I will be carried”
portaberis: “You will be carried”
portabitur: “he will be carried”
… etc
Or
vincar: “I will be defeated”
vinceris: “you will be defeated”
vincetur: “he will be defeated”
… etc
If you're not sure about the different futures, read this post about future verbs.
Using the Perfect Stem
The tenses that use the perfect stem are:
the perfect
the pluperfect
the future perfect passives
These tenses are formed using the fourth principle part in your dictionaries, the Perfect Passive Participle, and different forms of the verb esse. If you need a quick recap on this verb, head to this post.
puella a milite servata est. “The girl has been saved by the soldier”.
servata est is a perfect passive verb. It uses the fourth principle part, servata and then the present tense of the verb “to be” est. These two words together become a perfect passive verb.
It has to be servata by the way, because I'm talking about the girl, she's the nominative and the ending has to therefore be feminine.
heri in taberna visi eratis. “You had been seen yesterday in the shop”.
visi eratis is a pluperfect passive verb. This is using the fourth principle part, the PPP along with the imperfect tense of the verb “to be”, eratis.
In this case, I'm talking to more than one person, visi eratis, “you plural had been seen”. The ending of the PPP changes to reflect this plural subject.
tribus diebus feminae inventae erint. “The women will have been found within three days.”
This inventae erint is a future perfect. At some point in the future, they will have already been found - a completed action in the future.
This uses the PPP, which is feminine plural to agree with the women, and it uses the future of the verb to be erint - the third person plural.
These are all using the perfect stem, or more correctly, the fourth principle part, which is the perfect passive participle. So these passive verbs that use the perfect stem are formed using the PPP plus the verb to be in various tenses.
Perfect Passive Verbs
PPP + esse (present tense)
portatus sum. “I have been carried”.
portatus es. “You have been carried”
portatus est. “He has been carried”
portati sumus. “We have been carried”
portati estis. “You have been carried”
portati sunt. “They have been carried”
NB: 1) Remember that the PPP changes in number and gender to agree with the noun it is describing. 2) It will only be in the nominative case when used to create a verb.
Pluperfect Passive Verbs
PPP + esse (imperfect tense)
portatus eram. “I had been carried”
portatus eras. “You had been carried”
… etc
Future Perfect Passive Verbs
PPP + esse (future tense)
portatus ero. “I will have been carried”
portatus eris. “You will have been carried”
… etc
PPPs Agree
Now actually, all of the Perfect stem examples I’ve written out above are slightly grammatically incorrect. This is because I am a woman and, as I mentioned in the NB, the PPP should agree in number and gender with the subject.
So if I'm saying all those verbs, it should be portata sum, portata eram, portata ero etc, because I am feminine, so I should use the feminine endings.
If it was talking about a man, portatus would be correct. If it was about a gift, it would be portatum. Latin has 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. So just something to look out for.
They can also be plural. So portati for many men, portatae for many women, and portata for many gifts.
Don’t be Passive about Passive Verbs
So just little a recap:
Active verbs: the nominative does the action. The king sees the messenger.
Passive verbs: the nominative receives the action. The messenger is seen by the king.
And that's all there is to passive verbs. If you're not sure about any of these endings, you can download my complete reference guide to Latin verbs here. It's got all of them written out in lovely tables, and it'll really help you when you're trying to learn these endings.
Let me know what you think of passive verbs in the comments! Do you love them as much as I do or are they the bane of your life?
Thanks so much for joining me, and I'll see you next time on bambasbat!
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