Le Passif: Overview

The passive voice (la voix passive) is the construction where the grammatical subject is not the doer of the action but the receiver of it: the door was opened, the book is read, the house was built. French has a passive — built from être and a past participle — but it is used noticeably less than English passive. Where English will quite happily say Mistakes were made, French prefers On a fait des erreurs or sometimes Des erreurs ont été commises.

This page covers the formation, the agreement rule, the choice of preposition for the agent, when to use the passive, and — importantly — the alternatives that French speakers reach for first. By the end you should know how to build a passive sentence, how to recognize one in writing, and how to avoid the over-passive trap that English speakers regularly fall into.

Formation: être + past participle

The French passive is built from a tensed form of the auxiliary être plus the past participle of the main verb. The past participle agrees with the subject in gender and number, exactly like an adjective.

Subject + être (in any tense) + past participle (agreeing with subject) + (par/de + agent)

The structural relationship to the active voice is the same as in English. The active Marie a écrit cette lettre becomes the passive Cette lettre a été écrite par Marie: the active object becomes the passive subject, the active subject becomes a par-phrase, and the verb takes its passive shape.

Note that être itself can sit in any tense — that is what gives the passive its full range across time. Est ouverte (present), était ouverte (imparfait), a été ouverte (passé composé), sera ouverte (futur), aurait été ouverte (conditionnel passé), and so on. For the full set of tenses, see the formation across all tenses page.

Agreement: like an adjective

This is the simplest part of the passive. The past participle behaves like an adjective and agrees with the subject in gender and number — masculine singular bare, feminine singular adds -e, masculine plural adds -s, feminine plural adds -es.

For consonant-final participles (écrit, fait, dit, mis, pris, mort, ouvert, peint), the agreement is audible: la porte est ouverte /uvɛʁt/ has a clearly pronounced /t/ that le livre est ouvert /uvɛʁ/ does not. See the pronunciation page for details.

The agent: par or de

When the doer of the action is named, French introduces it with one of two prepositions: par (the default, for actions) or de (more limited, for states and emotions).

Par — the default for actions

The vast majority of agents in modern French passives are introduced by par. This is what you should reach for unless a specific reason pushes you toward de.

De — for states, feelings, and characterization

A small group of verbs — primarily verbs of emotion (aimer, adorer, respecter, détester, craindre, redouter), verbs of accompaniment (suivi, accompagné, entouré), and verbs of knowledge (connu, ignoré) — take de when the relationship is more about state than about action. The semantic intuition: par names someone who does something; de names someone who feels something or who constitutes the surrounding state.

In modern conversational French, par tends to encroach on de — aimé par tous would be heard, even if aimé de tous is more idiomatic. Don't worry too much about getting this distinction right at B1; the page on par vs. de covers it more thoroughly.

When the agent is unstated

Often, the agent is not mentioned at all — either because it is unknown, because it is generic, or because the speaker chose to suppress it. This is one of the main reasons for using a passive in the first place.

When to use the passive

Three legitimate uses, all overlapping with the English logic:

1. The agent is unknown — La voiture a été volée (we don't know who).
2. The agent is generic, irrelevant, or obvious — Le pont sera achevé en 2027 (whoever the construction company is, it does not matter for this sentence).
3. The receiver of the action is the topic — Cette toile a été peinte par Monet (the topic is the painting, and the agent is mentioned for art-historical interest).

Outside these three cases, French tends to avoid the passive in favor of one of two alternatives — and this is where the contrast with English really lives.

Why French uses the passive less than English

English passive is unconstrained: The book was published, mistakes were made, the door was opened, the cake was eaten. French has all of these structures available, but for casual contexts French speakers reach for two other constructions first.

Alternative 1: on + active voice

The pronoun on is essentially a generic third-person subject — "one," "people," "we," depending on context. When you don't want to name a specific agent, on + active voice is overwhelmingly the default in French.

This construction is so reflexive in French that an English-style passive (Le français est parlé au Québec) sounds slightly stilted, even though it is grammatical. The on version is the natural choice for spoken and casual written French. See avoiding the passive with on for more.

Alternative 2: the pronominal passive (se + verb)

For non-human subjects, French has a third option: the pronominal passive (also called le passif pronominal or se passive). The pattern is Subject + se + verb (third person), and it expresses passivity without using être.

The pronominal passive works only with non-human subjects (because human subjects would create reflexive ambiguity) and is especially common with verbs of consumption, perception, language, and habit. See the pronominal passive page for detail.

Three ways to say the same thing

Because French has these three options, English passive sentences typically have three plausible French translations:

The first option (formal passive) corresponds most closely to English passive structurally. The second is what you should reach for first in informal speech. The third is the most idiomatic when the meaning is "this thing is generally V-ed" rather than "a specific event of V-ing happened to it."

Comparison with English

English speakers learning French should expect three friction points:

1. French passive is less common. A natural English sentence like The book was published in 2010 sounds slightly heavy in French. Native speakers will more often say On a publié le livre en 2010. Train yourself to consider on
   • active before reaching for être
     • participle.
2. Passive can be morphologically heavy. Compound passives stack two past forms: La lettre a été écrite literally puts avoir
   • été
     • écrite together. This three-part construction is one reason French avoids the passive for everyday meanings.
3. There is a third option (pronominal passive) that English doesn't have. Ces livres se vendent bien — the verb is in third-person plural active form but the meaning is passive. English would normally say These books sell well (with an unmarked active that has a passive feel), which sometimes maps to French se vendre, sometimes to être vendu, sometimes to on vend.

The English passive can be translated word-for-word into French, but the result will often sound less natural than one of the alternatives. Treat the formal passive as one of three tools, not the default.

A small wrinkle: only transitive verbs passivize

A French verb can only be made passive if it has a direct object in the active voice. Verbs like parler à quelqu'un (parler is intransitive; à quelqu'un is an indirect object) cannot form a passive. You cannot say Marie a été parlée par Pierre to mean "Pierre talked to Marie." The same goes for téléphoner à, succéder à, plaire à, and any verb whose complement is introduced by a preposition.

This contrasts with English, where Marie was spoken to by Pierre is grammatical (if a bit awkward). English allows passivization of indirect objects; French does not. Always check that the verb takes a direct object before passivizing.

Comparison with adjectival use of the past participle

Because both passive and adjectival uses of the past participle involve être, learners sometimes confuse them. The line between them can be subtle.

A useful diagnostic: if you can add par X, the construction is passive. If the natural completion is depuis..., toujours, or another stative complement, the past participle is functioning as an adjective. Often both readings are available and the difference is contextual.

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• The French passive is être (in any tense) + past participle, with the participle agreeing with the subject in gender and number.
• The agent is introduced by par by default (for actions) or de for states, feelings, and characterization (aimé de tous, suivi de, entouré de).
• Only transitive verbs can be made passive. Verbs taking à
  • person (parler à, téléphoner à) cannot passivize.
• French uses the passive less than English. The two main alternatives are on + active (most natural in conversation) and se + verb (pronominal passive, especially for non-human subjects expressing habits or general facts).
• When tempted by a passive, ask: would on work here? If yes, prefer it. Reserve the formal passive for cases where the receiver of the action is the genuine topic and where on would feel out of register.
• The full tense paradigm is on the formation across all tenses page; the par vs. de distinction is on its dedicated page.