The Passive with word

When you want to say that something is being done — built, written, applied, cooked — Afrikaans uses the auxiliary word plus a past participle: die huis word gebou ("the house is being built"). This is the dynamic passive: it describes an action as a process, while it is happening. This page covers only that construction. The other half of the passive system — the is/was-passive for completed actions and resulting states (die huis is gebou, "the house has been built") — lives on a separate page, The Stative Passive with is/was, and the two are compared head-to-head in Choosing: word vs is in the passive.

The basic pattern: word + participle

The recipe is fixed: take the subject (the thing the action happens to), add the auxiliary word, and put the past participle at the end of the clause.

Notice the word order. word sits in the second position, the normal slot for a finite verb, and the participle (gebou, geskryf, toegepas) is pushed all the way to the end of the clause. Anything else — adverbs, time phrases — slots in between.

This clause-final participle is the same position the participle takes in the perfect tense (ek het die brief geskryf), so if you have met the perfect, the rhythm will already feel familiar. The difference is the auxiliary: het for the active perfect, word for the dynamic passive.

word is literally "become"

Here is the insight that makes the whole construction click: word is not a special passive particle. It is the ordinary verb word, "to become." Afrikaans builds its action-passive the way German and Dutch do — by saying that the subject becomes acted-upon. Die huis word gebou is, almost literally, "the house becomes built." Because word means "become," it inherently points at a change of state in progress, which is exactly what a dynamic passive expresses. You can see the same verb doing ordinary linking work in sentences like dit word koud ("it is getting cold") — there, too, word signals a process, a becoming. (For word as a plain linking verb, see Copular verbs.)

This is why English speakers should not look for a one-word translation of word. English splits the job across "is being" and "gets": is being built, gets built. Afrikaans uses one auxiliary for both, and that auxiliary happens to also be the everyday verb "become."

Naming the doer: the deur-agent

In a passive sentence the doer is demoted — it is no longer the subject. If you still want to mention who is doing the action, you introduce them with the preposition deur ("by"). The agent phrase normally sits just before the clause-final participle.

deur is the same word as the preposition "through" and the conjunction in deurdat — context tells you which is meant. The crucial point for English speakers is that the passive agent is deur, never by and never met. Met would mean "with" in the instrumental sense (die brief word met 'n pen geskryf — "the letter is being written with a pen"), which is a different role entirely.

Most of the time the doer is simply left out. That is, after all, the main reason to use the passive — to talk about an action without naming, or without knowing, who performs it.

The participle: same ge- rules as the perfect

The participle in a word-passive is the ordinary past participle, formed with the prefix ge- for most verbs (bou → gebou, skryf → geskryf, kook → gekook). Verbs with an unstressed inseparable prefix take no ge- (toepas → toegepas is separable, but verkoop → verkoop, betaal → betaal). Separable verbs infix the ge- (toepas → toegepas, aflewer → afgelewer). These are exactly the rules you already use for the perfect tense — nothing new to learn here.

Because betaal and verkoop keep no ge-, their passive word betaal / word verkoop looks identical to a possible active present — but the auxiliary word and the absence of an object make the passive reading clear.

The dynamic passive in other tenses

To put the dynamic passive in the past, change word to its past form. In modern spoken Afrikaans this is done with the perfect: is ... geword is archaic and avoided; instead the past dynamic passive most often surfaces as is gebou — which is where the line between the dynamic and the stative passive blurs. For a clean ongoing-past sense, Afrikaans typically uses the present word with a past time frame, or restructures. The cleanest forward-looking dynamic passive uses sal ("will"):

Note the order with a modal: the modal sal takes second position, and both the participle and the infinitive word go to the clause end, in the order participle + word. This page focuses on the present-tense dynamic passive, which is by far the most common; the full past-passive picture is handled on The Stative Passive with is/was and Choosing: word vs is in the passive.

Common mistakes

Using is for an action in progress. This is the number-one English-speaker error. English "is built / is being built" both contain "is", so learners reach for Afrikaans is. But is gebou means the house already stands (a completed result), while the action in progress needs word.

Omitting deur before the agent. English drops the preposition in some constructions, but Afrikaans always marks the doer with deur.

Using met or by for the agent. Met is instrumental ("with a tool"); there is no by in Afrikaans passives.

Leaving the participle in the middle. The participle must reach the end of the clause; learners influenced by English word order strand it too early.

Key takeaways

• The dynamic passive (an action being done, right now or as a process) uses word + past participle, with the participle at the end of the clause.
• word is the everyday verb "to become" — die huis word gebou is literally "the house becomes built", which is why it signals an ongoing change rather than a finished state.
• The doer, if mentioned, is introduced by deur ("by") — never met, never by.
• The participle follows the same ge- rules as the perfect tense.
• The choice word vs is is the whole action vs result distinction: word gebou = is being built; is gebou = has been built. When in doubt, see Choosing: word vs is in the passive.