Resumen El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera

The Passive Voice

The active voice is the “normal” or at least the far more frequent way of expressing an action in English and Spanish:
|Ella |escribió |varios dramas. | |Shewrote several plays. |
|(doer) |(action) |(thing done) | | |
|(subject) |(verb) |(direct object) | ||

|Nosotros |vimos |a |Juana. | |We saw Juana. |
|(doer) |(action) | |(done-to) | | |
|(subject) |(verb) | |(directobject) | | |


In the active voice, the “doer” is the subject of the verb. The “thing done” or the person “done-to” is the object of the verb. In the passive voice: the“thing done” or the person “done-to” becomes the subject of the verb and the “doer” —if one is given— becomes the agent (introduced by the word “by” in English or por in Spanish):
|Los dramas fueron escritospor ella. | |The plays were written by her. |
|  |
|Juanafue vista por varias personas. | |Juana was seen by several people. |


Note that as is demonstrated above regarding the passive voice in Spanish:
1. The passivevoice is formed by using the verb ser plus the past participle of a transitive verb (i.e., a verb which must be capable of taking a direct object).
2. The past participle must agree in gender andnumber with the subject of the verb. In essence you are linking the subject and the past participle —as if it were an adjective— with the verb ser.
3. The passive voice in Spanish is most frequentlyused in the preterit, although in theory it can occur in any tense, both in the indicative and in the subjunctive.
There are some English sentences in which the subject is the indirect object;...