English Grammar - PASSIVE

Hi. James from EngVid. Ezekiel. He's here and he's had two shows. He's been on two videos.

Now he's writing his own messages. Let's see what he's got, okay?

This lesson has been thought up by me, Mr. E. Ezekiel, you're a funny guy. His, was,

will be and has been. He's testing me and I think I know the answer. If you can figure

it out, great. But let's go to the board and try to figure it out. Mr. E. Mr. E. See how

funny he is? He's saying it's a Mr. E, a challenge. I got the answer. Ready?

So Mr. E, the clue is here. First, he has is, was, will be, has been, right? The verb

to be in the present, past, future and perfect sense. And then he talked about has been thought

up by me. By me is used in one particular tense. Or actually voice and I figured it

out. Let's work, okay? By me usually indicates that this is not as important as what was

done. And when we use this, I'm being very, very mysterious right now. When we use this

voice we're actually trying to tell you two things, okay? What we're trying to tell

you is one, two, one, maybe we don't know who is doing the action, okay? Or we simply

don't care. Have you figured out the Mr. E? It's the passive voice. When we use the passive

voice, two things occur. Number one, or come to mind, number one, either we don't know

who's done it. For instance, the house was built 20 years ago. Who built the house? I

don't know. Do you know? Don't think so. Or someone, my wallet was stolen by someone.

My wallet was stolen by someone. Who stole it? I don't really care. I want my money back.

I want my wallet back, okay? Was stolen. Now when we look here, what we have to do is figure

out how do we get the passive voice. Well, the first hint is right here. These are all

forms of the verb to be, okay? Now we have, as I said, the present tense of the verb to

be, past tense. This is the third person singular. We have the future tense. We'll have to teach

you about the future, won't we? But for now, future tense. When we have will, the verb

that follows is usually in the base form, and we've got that here. And we have the perfect

tense. So we have have or has, and we have been. Has been. William Shatner, look it up.

Anyway, has been. So, we use in the passive the verb to be plus a past participle. I'm

going to put PP here. And we look at Mr. E's lesson. If you look here, he's got what? Here's

your verb to be. Here's your perfect. And this is the past participle of faith, right?

See, he's a very sneaky guy, alright? This is the passive form. This lesson has been

thought up by me, Mr. E, right? Cool, yeah. See, right? I do too. So, when we talk about

the passive voice, there's two things to remember. Number one, we may not know who's done it.

Number two, we don't care who's done it. Sometimes, actually, what we want to stress is, this

is sort of the underlying theme, or the reason why we do it. We really want to talk about

what's being affected. So instead of being done, we want to know what's being affected,

right? The object that's being affected. Because when we do the structure for the passive,

okay? I'll give you an example. James wrote this message. Now, active, James wrote. You

know I wrote it. That's active, okay? Put active up here. You know that's active, yeah?

Now, how do we make this passive? Now, first off, by James, we can use, we can just say

this message was written. We don't have to say by James. But sometimes, it's nice to

include the author, or the person doing the action. But what we care about is this part

right there. This message. Now, in this sentence, this message is the object. So we're talking

about the effect on the object. So this message was written by James. This is important to

us. So the object's important, so we make it basically the subject of the sentence.

You know why? Because the person doing the action is by James. This house was built by

blah, blah, blah. Okay? Cool? So, when we use the active, we want to say who's doing

it. When we use the passive, we want to say the reaction or the action on the thing itself.

Right? Cool? Now, how do we do it? Once again, you remember what we said. We have the subject

plus verb to be, right? Plus, plus participle. Now, depending if we're looking at the present

perfect, then we're going to have to have the verb have and the verb to be, plus plus

participle. Hell, why am I telling you when I can just write it to make your life easy?

Okay? So, if we're doing present tense, it would be subject plus verb to be, right? Plus

PP. That'd be present tense. Past tense, it'd be subject plus verb to be, in the past, plus

PP. Future tense, it'd be subject plus will, plus verb to be, base, plus PP. And, present

perfect tense, okay? Subject plus have, they were has, okay? And, verb to be, PP, okay?

And then PP. Look what up. That's how the structure for the passive. With the use we

talked about, if you remember rightly, right? One or two uses. We don't know who did it,

or we don't really care, right? Now, something to keep in mind when we talk about passive

and active, and I'll make it quick because I've got to go soon, right? I've got to go.

See, that's not passive. We usually use the active because the active is much more lively,

much more informative, much more direct. But, you can use the passive form when you want

to, maybe you have to say something and it's not nice, and you want to make it softer for

the person receiving the message. For instance, we have reviewed your work and we don't like

it. That's not so good, is it? So, your work has been reviewed by some people and they

do not like it. Softer. You're not saying we, you're saying some people, and it's not

you. So, sometimes the passive is used to soften the blow, as we say, to make it easier

on others. Anyway, I've got to get the heck out of here. Hope this has been informative.

If it's not, it's not my fault. Talk to Mr. E. He's got a good sense of humor. I'm going

to go and I'm going to show you where you should go to get more lessons on the passive,

the active, the indirect, the direct, you know, voices that we have in English. Want

to go there? Go here. One, two, three. That's www.eng, as in English, of course. That's

what we're working in. Vid, as in video. I just love our name. Okay? Dot com. I'll be

there with some other teachers. We'd be happy to teach you about passive, active, indirect,

direct, whatever tense is. You know, you need to think about it. I've got to get out of

here. I need to make my head spin. Have a good one. Has been.