German Learning Resources

Several prepositions can be used to indicate something about the action described in the passive voice. These are: the preposition for indicating the agent ( von); for indicating the means ( durch ); and for indicating the instrument ( mit ).

The previous lesson demonstrated how to correctly order verbs in a sentence and showed that comprehension of a German sentence relies more on understanding and recognising the cases rather than word order. Word order is much more flexible in German: elements can be moved around in a German sentence (excluding the finite verb) without affecting the overall meaning of a sentence.

The majority of transitive verbs can be used in the passive voice. A transitive verb is a verb which governs one or more objects. For example, in the sentence below, the verb  ausfüllen requires an accusative object, which is das Formular .

The passive voice can be constructed in all eight tenses of the Subjunctive mood, although some are very rare.

Every tense and mood available in the passive voice can have a modal verb added to it. Similar to the active voice, modal verbs are primarily used in the non-perfect tenses with the passive voice ( Present, Simple Past, Future) in written and spoken language.

In English and German, a verb can have one of two voices which describe the relationship between the verb and the subject. These voices are the active voice and passive voice.

The passive voice can be expressed in mostly the same range of tenses and moods as in the active voice. Both passive voice forms are formed using an auxiliary verb and the past participle of the verb describing the action in the active voice equivalent, or the main verb. The Vorgangspassiv  or Handlungspassiv  is formed using werden as its auxiliary verb s.