Breakdown of Hier wird öffentlich gesprochen.
hier
here
sprechen
to speak
werden
to be (passive auxiliary + past participle)
öffentlich
public
Questions & Answers about Hier wird öffentlich gesprochen.
Where is the subject in this sentence?
There isn't one! This is an impersonal passive construction. German allows verbs that don't take a direct object to be put into the passive voice to emphasize the action itself, rather than who is doing it.
Since there is no subject, why does the verb conjugate as wird?
When a passive sentence has no grammatical subject, the auxiliary verb werden automatically defaults to the third-person singular form. That's why we use wird along with the past participle gesprochen.
Shouldn't there be a dummy subject es, like Hier wird es öffentlich gesprochen?
No, the dummy es is completely dropped here. In an impersonal passive sentence, es is only used to fill the very first position if you don't have another word to put there (like Es wird hier öffentlich gesprochen.). Because Hier is already in position 1, the es vanishes.
How would I express this same idea in the active voice?
You would use the indefinite pronoun man (meaning 'one' or 'people'). The active version would be Man spricht hier öffentlich. Using the impersonal passive instead just focuses entirely on the action itself.
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