German
German has an impersonal passive voice, as shown in the examples below:
Active Voice:
- Die Kinder schlafen.
- "The children sleep."
Impersonal Passive Voice:
- Es wird geschlafen.
- It is slept.
- "Someone is sleeping."
In the latter example, the subject (Die Kinder, "the children") has been deleted, and in its place is the dummy es "it".
The subject can be reintroduced using the preposition von, "by":
- Es wird von den Kindern geschlafen.
- It is by the children slept.
- "It is slept by the children."
The sentence can also be constructed without an overt subject by placing an adverbial in the first position:
- Heute wird geschlafen. Dort wird geschlafen.
- Today is slept. There is slept.
- "Someone is sleeping today. Someone is sleeping there."
Read more about this topic: Impersonal Passive Voice
Famous quotes containing the word german:
“The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn’t believe it gets one in the neck.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“Boys hide in lunging cubes
Crouching to explode,
Beyond the Atlantic skies,
With cheerful cries
Their barking tubes
Upon the German toad.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)