Hello and welcome to six minute grammar.

I'm Neil and I'm Rob Hello.

Today we're talking about the passive voice.

Yes, the passive voice in English.

We can talk about things in both the active on dhe passive voice.

Yes, and we're going to start with the active voice on Here's Mike.

With our first example for Real.

Williams sang the song Happy and one More time Pharrell Williams sang the song Happy Pharrell Williams sang the song Happy Good song, isn't it Rub?

Well, it makes me happy, anyway, and in grammatical terms we've got the subject.

Pharrell Williams and the verb sang and then the object off the verb, the song happy.

And that is an example of the active voice because the performer off the action, the Duer, is at the beginning of the sentence for L.

We're focusing on the person or the thing that does theat action off the verb.

Okay, so far, so good.

But what if we want to focus on what receives the action?

That's the object in the active sentence.

What if we're more interested in the song than we are in the singer?

Can we put the song happy at the beginning of a sentence.

Well, yes, we can, but the grammar needs to change.

Listen carefully.

The song Happy was sung by Pharrell Williams.

Again, the song Happy was sung by Pharrell Williams.

So now the receiver of the action theme song Happy comes First.

It changes place with the Dua because we've changed the sentence structure.

We need to make two changes to the sentence.

First, we need to add the verb to be in the correct form.

Second, we have to use the past participle off the verb, and that gives us a sentence in the passive voice.

The song Happy was sung by Pharrell Williams.

Let's listen to those two sentences one more time.

Active voice Farewell.

Williams sang the song Happy Add passive voice.

The song Happy was sung by Pharrell Williams.

Thanks, Mike, and the two sentences have exactly the same meaning.

Don't they kneel?

They do.

They have exactly the same meaning.

So you might be wondering why we need two different ways of saying the same thing.

Yes, I was wondering that.

But the good thing about passive sentences is that we can give the receiver of the action more importance in our sentence by putting it at the start.

But that's not the only reason that the passive voice is useful right now, right?

The passive voice is really useful when we don't know who or what performed the action or if anyone knows it, so we don't need to say it.

Can we have an example?

Please, Mike.

Millions of cars were sold in 2012 and one more time.

Millions of cars were sold in 2012.

So that's a passive sentence with millions of cars at the start, then we've got the verb to be.

Plus, the past participle were sold.

And then for the doer of the action, Well, there is no Duer.

What's that, Neil?

No do of the action.

It all sounds strange.

Well, actually, we don't have to have a do ER in a passive sentence.

So if the duo is not really important or if it's obvious, we can leave it out, we know that some people sold all these millions of cars, but we don't have to say it.

Yes, so we leave the performer of the action out if it's not important or if everybody knows right.

You can also leave the doer out if you don't know it like this.

My bicycle was stolen last weekend.

Mike Poor Mike.

Six minutes from BBC learning english dot com on We're talking about the passive voice now to make sentences in the passive voice, we change the form of the verb to be.

There's a present, tense example.

Millions of songs are downloaded every day again.

Millions of songs are downloaded every day and a past tense example.

15 million songs were downloaded yesterday on Now it's time for a quiz.

Change these sentences from Active Into Passive and remember, you might not need a do er Okay, Number one.

People speak Spanish in Cuba on chili on.

The answer is Spanish is spoken in Cuba and chili number two.

The police arrested 10 people last night, and the answer is 10 people were arrested last night.

Okay, last one.

Brazil won the 1994 World Cup.

I remember it well.

The 1994 World Cup was won by Brazil on The dew of Brazil is important here, isn't it, Rob?

Yes, it's very important.

So we don't leave it out.

Well done.

If you got all those right.

So that's the passive voice.

We use it to give importance to the receiver of the action of a verb or when we don't know who did it or everyone knows it.

And there's more about this on our website at BBC learning english dot com, Join us again soon from or six minute grammar.

Bye bye.