Voice in Romanian: Active, Passive, Reflexive, Impersonal | Romanian Grammar

Romanian stacks four "voices" onto its verbs, and the reason learners find the system confusing is that one little word — se — is responsible for three of them. Se can mark a passive (se construiește "is built"), a reflexive or middle (se spală "washes himself"), and an impersonal (se spune "they say"). This page steps back from the detailed pages and lays the whole system out side by side, so you can see how the pieces relate — and, crucially, gives you a two-question test for figuring out which job se is doing in any sentence you meet. The detailed mechanics live elsewhere; this is the map that tells you which detailed page you actually need.

The four voices at a glance

Voice	Marker	Example	Gloss
Active	(none)	Muncitorii construiesc casa.	The workers are building the house.
Passive (a fi)	a fi + participle	Casa a fost construită de muncitori.	The house was built by the workers.
Passive (se)	se + active verb	Casa se construiește repede.	The house is being built fast. (agentless)
Reflexive / middle	se / mă, te…	Se spală pe mâini.	He's washing his hands.
Impersonal	se (3sg, no subject)	Se spune că vine iarna.	They say winter is coming.

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The whole system reduces to two big choices. First: active or passive? — is the subject doing the action or receiving it? Second, if you've gone passive or se-marked: which passive/se? — and that turns on whether you can name an agent and whether the subject is acting on itself. The rest of this page is those two choices in detail.

Active: the baseline

The active voice needs no marker: the subject is the doer, the object is the patient. Everything else is a transformation of this.

Bunica a copt o pâine uriașă pentru duminică.

Grandma baked a huge loaf for Sunday.

Arhitectul a proiectat clădirea în doi ani.

The architect designed the building in two years.

The a fi passive: name your agent

The a fi passive is built like the English one — a fi ("to be") in the right tense, plus a past participle that agrees with the subject in gender and number. Its defining feature is an agent slot: you can append de (or the more formal de către) plus the doer.

Romanul „Ion” a fost scris de Liviu Rebreanu.

The novel 'Ion' was written by Liviu Rebreanu. (named agent)

Legea a fost adoptată de către Parlament marți.

The law was adopted by Parliament on Tuesday. (formal de către)

Lucrările vor fi terminate până în toamnă.

The works will be finished by autumn. (agent suppressed but expressible)

Watch the agreement: scris (masc. sg.), adoptată (fem. sg.), terminate (fem. pl.) — the participle inflects like an adjective. This passive is the formal, journalistic register and the obligatory choice whenever you actually name the agent. The full conjugation and agreement rules are on the a fi passive page.

The se-passive: lighter, agentless, preferred

The se-passive uses the reflexive clitic se with an ordinary active verb, and it has no agent slot at all. It is the natural, lighter way to say something is/gets done when who does it is irrelevant — generalizations, habits, recipes, signs, market facts.

Aici se vorbește românește.

Romanian is spoken here. (no agent — general practice)

Cărțile bune se vând repede.

Good books sell fast.

Berea se servește rece.

Beer is served cold. (instruction)

Crucially, the verb in a se-passive agrees with the patient, which is the grammatical subject: se vinde cartea (sg.) vs se vând cărțile (pl.). Because the se-passive is so much lighter than a fost vândut, native speakers reach for it constantly — far more than English speakers expect, since English has only the be-passive. The decision between the two passives is laid out in full on se-passive vs a fi; the headline is: name the agent → a fi; suppress it → se.

The reflexive / middle: the subject acts on itself

The reflexive uses the clitic series mă, te, se, ne, vă, se and means the subject does the action to or for itself. Romanian, like the other Romance languages, also uses these same clitics for a broad middle voice — events that happen to a subject without an external doer (se trezește "wakes up," se întâmplă "happens," se teme "is afraid"). These often have no reflexive sense in English at all.

Mă spăl pe mâini înainte de masă.

I wash my hands before eating. (true reflexive — subject acts on itself)

Copilul se trezește devreme în fiecare zi.

The child wakes up early every day. (middle — no external agent)

Ne întâlnim la cinci în fața cinematografului.

We're meeting at five in front of the cinema. (reciprocal — each other)

The reciprocal (ne întâlnim "we meet each other," se ceartă "they quarrel with each other") is a sub-type of the middle. The full range of middle and reciprocal uses is mapped on the se middle-voice page.

The impersonal se: nobody and everybody

Finally, the impersonal se makes a statement with no subject at all — the Romanian rendering of English generic one / you / they / people. The verb is locked in the third person singular, even when the meaning feels plural.

Se spune că anul ăsta iarna vine devreme.

They say winter's coming early this year.

La noi nu se mănâncă cu mâna la masă.

Where we're from, you don't eat with your hands at the table.

Pe căldura asta nu se doarme deloc.

In this heat you can't sleep at all. (intransitive — no patient, so impersonal)

The impersonal is the natural voice for norms, instructions, and reports — see the impersonal se page.

Telling se's three jobs apart

Here is the practical heart of the page. When you meet a se, run two questions:

Question 1 — Is there an implied human agent doing something to a patient?

No, the subject simply undergoes a change or there's no patient at all → reflexive/middle (se trezește, se sparge geamul).
Yes, someone unspecified is acting on a thing → keep going to Question 2.

Question 2 — Is there a patient that becomes the grammatical subject (and does the verb agree with it)?

Yes — the verb agrees with a plural patient → passive se (Se vând case — "Houses are sold," case is subject, verb plural).
No patient becomes subject; the verb is stuck in 3rd singular → impersonal se (Se merge mult pe jos — "One walks a lot," no subject, verb singular).

Test	Reflexive / middle	Passive se	Impersonal se
Subject acts on itself?	yes	no	no
Implied outside agent?	no	yes	yes
Patient → grammatical subject?	—	yes	no
Verb agreement	with subject	with patient (can be pl.)	always 3rd sg.
Example	se spală	se vând case	se merge pe jos

Se vând case noi în cartier.

New houses are being sold in the neighborhood. (passive — verb plural, agrees with 'case')

Se merge mult pe jos în orașul ăsta.

One walks a lot in this city. (impersonal — intransitive, verb stays singular)

Băiatul se piaptănă singur acum.

The boy combs his own hair now. (reflexive — subject acts on itself)

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The single sharpest clue is verb number with a plural patient. Se vând case (plural verb) can only be a passive — the impersonal would freeze the verb singular (*se vinde case is not impersonal-grammatical here). And if the verb is intransitive (a merge, a dormi, a trăi) there is no patient at all, so a se on it must be impersonal: se trăiește bine "one lives well."

How voice interacts with the rest of the verb

Two quick connections worth noting. First, negation of any voice follows the ordinary rule — nu leads the block, including the se: nu se vinde, nu se spune, nu se spală (the se sits between nu and the verb, as on the verb negation page). Second, the a fi passive itself is a compound form (auxiliary a fi + participle), so it inflects for every tense and mood the auxiliary can take: a fost construit (past), va fi construit (future), ar fi construit (conditional). The se-passive, by contrast, simply inherits whatever tense the active verb is in.

Podul nu a fost încă terminat de constructori.

The bridge hasn't been finished yet by the builders. (negated a fi passive)

Pe vremea aceea aici se construiau corăbii.

In those days ships were built here. (se-passive in the imperfect, plural agreement)

Common Mistakes

Bolting an agent onto the se-passive (it has no agent slot):

❌ Cartea se vinde bine de editură.

Wrong — the se-passive can't host 'de + agent'. Name the agent → use a fi.

✅ Cartea a fost vândută bine de editură. / Cartea se vinde bine.

The book was sold well by the publisher. / The book sells well.

Using the stiff a fi passive for a generic, agentless statement:

❌ Aici este vorbit românește.

Unnatural — a general 'here X is spoken' wants se, not a fi.

✅ Aici se vorbește românește.

Romanian is spoken here.

Making the impersonal se agree in the plural:

❌ Se merg mult pe jos aici.

Wrong — the impersonal se is frozen in the 3rd singular: se merge.

✅ Se merge mult pe jos aici.

One walks a lot here.

Confusing a middle/reflexive with a passive:

❌ Reading 'Geamul se sparge ușor' as 'the window is broken by someone'.

Misread — with no implied agent this is a middle: 'the window breaks easily / is fragile', not a passive event.

✅ Geamul se sparge ușor. (middle: it breaks easily)

The window breaks easily.

Failing to agree the a fi participle with the subject:

❌ Casele a fost construit anul trecut.

Wrong — the participle must agree: casele (fem. pl.) → au fost construite.

✅ Casele au fost construite anul trecut.

The houses were built last year.

Key Takeaways

Romanian layers four voices: active, the a fi passive (named agent, formal, participle agrees), the se-passive (agentless, lighter, preferred for generalizations), and the reflexive/middle/impersonal se.
Name the agent → a fi; suppress it → se. Only the a fi passive has an agent slot.
se does triple duty. Sort it with two questions: does the subject act on itself (reflexive/middle), and does a patient become the subject with the verb agreeing (passive) or not (impersonal)?
A plural verb with a plural patient signals a passive; an intransitive verb with se signals the impersonal; a verb agreeing with a self-affecting subject signals reflexive/middle.

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