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There's a pretty simple way of explaining the utility of the passive voice. I use it a lot when trying to explain why it's not the devil. The passive voice is what you use when you want to hide the agent performing the verb, or focus the sentence on the object of the verb. I mean, yes, that's an oversimplification, but it's a good rule of thumb.
So it was a little surprising to me when I was reading this old textbook, Active German, and in the introduction that goes over the basic parts of speech and so forth, hit:
In the active voice, emphasis is put on the individual performing an action, e.g., "She saw you there." In the passive voice, emphasis is put on the action, e.g., "You were seen [by her] there."
Huh.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
But it's true that in English it's a lot easier to shuffle word order to emphasize different nouns than it is for emphasizing the verb itself. So now I need to ponder this use of the passive voice, and whether it works that way at all in English, or if it's more of a German thing.
Huh.
So it was a little surprising to me when I was reading this old textbook, Active German, and in the introduction that goes over the basic parts of speech and so forth, hit:
In the active voice, emphasis is put on the individual performing an action, e.g., "She saw you there." In the passive voice, emphasis is put on the action, e.g., "You were seen [by her] there."
Huh.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
But it's true that in English it's a lot easier to shuffle word order to emphasize different nouns than it is for emphasizing the verb itself. So now I need to ponder this use of the passive voice, and whether it works that way at all in English, or if it's more of a German thing.
Huh.