Passive Participles with Agents and Complements

An Egyptian passive participle presents a person or thing as affected by an action: مكتوب “written,” مقفول “closed,” or مرتب “arranged.” Its most characteristic reading is a current or contextually relevant state, but the surrounding sentence can place that state in the past or future. It may also keep a complement inherited from its verb: مكتوب على الضرف “written on the envelope” and معروف عند الناس “known among people.” A closely related passive-like status frame is متفق عليه “agreed upon”: متفق is morphologically the active participle of اتفق, but the whole impersonal expression foregrounds the agreed item.

Mainstream Cairene does not use one universal equivalent of English by. The choice of على، عند، لـ، من، بـ، بإيد depends on the participle’s lexical meaning and on whether the phrase names a location, beneficiary, source, instrument, or actual agent. That complement frame must be learned with the participle.

For the basic Form I shapes before adding these complements, see Passive Participles of Form I.

Core patterns and agreement

The table gives productive shapes, not a machine for inventing meanings. Form I passive participles commonly have مفعول, while derived verbs generally use an مـ participle whose vowels distinguish it imperfectly in unvocalized writing. Actual Egyptian pronunciation and lexical availability must be learned word by word.

Ordinary attributive and predicative participles agree like adjectives. With human referents, plural agreement is normal. Nonhuman plurals often take feminine-singular agreement in careful and widely shared Egyptian, though actual agreement can vary with animacy and register.

Keep the lexical preposition

A passive participle can preserve the relation selected by its verb or by an established expression. English may translate several of these relations with by, to, or no preposition at all, but Egyptian keeps distinct frames.

The last sentence uses impersonal masculine مطلوب, not agreement with the addressee. This is a productive request/obligation frame. By contrast, الموظفة مطلوبة في الاستقبال means “the employee is wanted/needed at reception,” where مطلوبة agrees with الموظفة.

The special frame متفق عليه

Professional Egyptian often uses fixed masculine متفق followed by على plus a pronoun that tracks the item agreed upon: متفق عليه، متفق عليها، متفق عليهم. Morphologically متفق is the active participle of اتفق, not a passive participle; the construction as a whole nevertheless gives the agreed item a passive-like status reading. This resembles a shared formal-Arabic construction, but the Cairene pronunciation and the absence of case endings remain Egyptian. Do not force ordinary adjective agreement onto the fixed participle.

In ordinary conversation, an active clause is often lighter: الفريق كله اتفق على الخطة “the whole team agreed on the plan.” The fixed participial version foregrounds the plan’s status and is common in meetings, announcements, and professional speech (professional/formal).

State, event, and agent

The participle normally describes a state; a finite verb reports an event. This is not the English contrast between written and writing. Egyptian has its own aspectual choice.

When an agent matters, colloquial Egyptian often prefers the finite active clause above. An agent can nevertheless be added with من in institutional wording or with بإيد in vivid everyday speech. بواسطة is possible in formal written language but sounds bureaucratic in casual conversation.

كان places the state in the past. حيكون مكتوب can place it in the future. The participle itself does not inflect for tense.

Lexicalization and register

Some participles have become ordinary adjectives or nouns: مشغول “busy,” معروف “well-known,” and ممنوع “forbidden.” Their present meanings are not always recoverable from a verb formula. Mainstream Cairo uses them freely (informal/neutral). Fixed frames such as متفق عليه and explicit agents with بواسطة rise in professional or formal style. Regional, class, age, community, and performance varieties may differ in preferred wording, but those differences do not license adding MSA case endings to a Cairene sentence.

Common Mistakes

Translating every English -ing form with a participle

Replacing every complement with من

Forcing agreement onto fixed متفق عليه

Guessing a related maṣdar from the participle

Importing formal case endings

Key Takeaways

Passive participles agree when they are ordinary predicates or modifiers, but some prepositional status expressions—especially متفق عليه—have a fixed masculine participle and agreement on the prepositional pronoun. Learn each complement frame lexically. The participle foregrounds a state; a finite verb foregrounds the event or actor, and كان or context supplies time.