Welcome to the A to Z English podcast.
My name is Jack, and I'm here with my co -host, Sochal.
And today, we are stepping into the grammar zone.
And we're going to talk about the active voice versus the passive voice.
And so, Sochal, when we use the active voice, that tends to be our typical, like, subject -verb -object sentences, right?
Yes. Yeah. Like, the cat chased the mouse.
um the cat is the subject chased is the verb and then the object of the of the cat's interest what the cat is chasing is the mouse um what if we put that into the passive voice um where we kind of basically the subject and the object are inverted uh kind of reversed um um so for example uh the mouse
was chased by the cat can you think of like a reason why we might use that kind of construction a passive voice the mouse was chased by the cat yeah I was thinking like we want to emphasize the the mouse instead of the cat right yeah I was going to say that too Cause it's like, technically it's the object
of the, of the sentence in the active, you know, the cat chased the mouse.
But if we want to emphasize the mouse, we can flip it around and use the passive voice.
The mouse was chased by the cat.
And I wanted to throw one more thing at you here.
Like there's another reason sometimes we use the passive voice in, and, uh, it's when the subject is unknown so oh can you think i was thinking of an example like imagine you're uh you wake up in the morning you go i know you don't drive but this is a hypothetical situation um you go out you you grab
your keys you go out to your uh your front uh front yard and your car is gone so we could use you know the active voice and we could say someone stole social's car but we often don't use the pronoun someone instead of instead you would come back in the house and say oh my gosh my car was stolen yep
yeah yeah yeah and in the full sentence would be my car was stolen by somebody but in this case we just the the subject is unknown we don't know sometimes we do we might come in and be like someone stole my car though yes yes we will say that yep yeah so i think that's where that would come into play
yes yes i and again this this is the whole point of like active and passive voice is that you get to choose the style that you and tone that you want to use I think this is that's why I'm not like a huge fan of teaching this kind of grammar to my students who are beginners because they it just confuses
them but for students that are like a little bit higher level and want to make their writing a little bit more interesting I think the passive voice can be a useful a useful tool um but but it's definitely not necessary definitely not necessary you could just say someone stole my car yeah yes yeah um
and um i'm also thinking like in the newspaper uh this is very common in like headlines am i wrong about that i'm thinking like um like Like, yeah.
Like, yes, because you'd say an office building was burned down by a 27 -year -old male.
Yes, exactly. Instead of a 27 -year -old male burned down an office building or something.
Right, right. Or you just might say like an office building was burned down yesterday, you know?
Yes. And they don't know who the perpetrator is, the person that did it.
And so, again, unknown subject, we can just use the passive voice.
An office building was burned down.
An elderly woman was murdered last night in the park.
You know, something like that.
Sorry for these dark examples, everybody.
But it tends to be like in crime, you know, crime pages, like those kinds of headlines, I think.
Right, yes. Yeah. Okay.
Well, I think we've pretty much dug ourselves.
Well, we put ourselves in a grammar hole, but I think we dug ourselves out mostly in this.
Mostly. Yes. All right, listeners, if you have any further questions, any grammar questions that you want to shoot our way, make sure to leave a comment down below at AtoZEnglishPodcast .com.
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See you guys next time.
Bye -bye. Bye -bye. Thank you.
