Ultimately, the word passive stems from the Latin verb pati, which means suffer. From that very same root we get vocabulary as common as patient (the one who suffers), passion (suffering) and patience, (the ability to suffer while someone takes their time to turn up or when you teach someone how to drive). I know it's not particularly useful information, but I bet you like these trivial nuggets of information. Anyhow, from those unpleasant origins we get a word whose meaning has morphed into something quite different. We say someone is passive when they don't take action, probably because they are content with being acted upon, as a result of which being passive is tantamount to being the "recipient" of an action, not necessarily a painful one. It is, of course, rather tempting to argue that being a passive often leads to some form of suffering, but that belongs to a different conversation.
Those of you in my C1.1 class should have received an exercise about the passive voice by mail. I'll send you the answers tomorrow. So I would like to say something to my C1.2 students. Also about the passive voice. By the way, big shout-out to my three followers in the Ukraine. So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Tricky stuff about the truly advanced material. Check out these two special cases:
1. The imperative:
When we turn the sentence serve the best champagne into the passive voice it becomes let the best wine be served. It sounds quite formal and slightly old-fashioned. The fact that it makes me think of the memorable biblical verse: Let there be light may explain why I like it so much.
2. Verbs like make, see and let
Consider these sentences: they let me go (meaning they fired me) becomes I was let go. Also the verbs make, which do NOT take a "to" in the active voice but need one in the passive voice. Look at this example:
They made me do it > I was made to do it
Something similar happens when we use verbs such as see or hear.
They saw me get out > I was seen to get out
As you see, the passive voice doesn't hold many surprises, but some things still need to be learned.
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