Today I'm at St. James's Park in London, which is right next to Buckingham Palace
It's all blurry you can't really see it
but trust me that is Buckingham Palace
The passive form: What is it why do we use it?
Me? I'm just enjoying the water and the sun!
Oh that's nice! Some water, sun, it's all very relaxing, and...
well let me take your mind off that for a second
In English, what is the structure of a sentence?
What?!
oh I I really don't want to talk about grammar
Oh come on! We're doing a lesson!
...and?
Please get an ambulance or something
Yeah yeah, an ambulance, great idea! I'll phone a helicopter or something!
what?
Dude! It's the ocean! Sharks bite!
so if you don't know the subject
Why haven't you called an ambulance!?
That's right! The passive form
So "Something bit me" becomes "I was bitten by something"
So, "something bit me" - That's an active sentence
"I was bitten by something"- A passive sentence
so that version of B will be a past tense
and that verb will always be in "Verb 3" / The past participle
It doesn't matter if it's a future tense past tense or present tense
that verb is always verb 3, past participle,
so "bite" - it's always "bitten"
Be careful and remember that when you use a passive voice
it completely changes the direction of the verb
so let me give you an example:
This sentence is an "Active sentence"
Let's use the same subject but change it to "passive"
So be careful, it completely changes who receives the action
Is it just to sound more formal?
I mean yeah it does sound more formal but that's not the only reason
it's because we don't know the subject
"Something bit me" - "I was bitten by something"
Maybe we don't know it, or maybe it's just really really obvious
in both cases the action is more important
the action is the focus of the sentence
and this could be more useful in social situations or political situations
Let's see the passive voice first:
"I acknowledge that mistakes were made here"
and he's right mistakes were made
Hmm interesting! Let's hear the "Active voice"
"yeah I take responsibility for it"
in an active voice you can see the subject taking responsibility for the action
so maybe you want to avoid responsibility for an action...
I'm gonna go knock on the Queen's door, and see if she wants to come out and play