Passive Voice
There are two ways to form the passive voice in Czech:
1. By the verb být (to be) and the passive participle (as in English):
- Město bylo založeno ve 14. století. The town was founded in the 14th century.
2. By adding the reflexive pronoun se:
- Ono se neudělalo. It has not been done.
- To se vyrábí v Číně. It is produced in China.
However, the use of se is not exclusive to the passive voice.
Read more about this topic: Czech Conjugation
Famous quotes containing the words passive voice, passive and/or voice:
“We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.””
—Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917)
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—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of “communication”; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)