Breakdown of Der faire Lohn ist gestern bezahlt worden.
sein
to be
bezahlen
to pay
gestern
yesterday
der
who, which, that (relative pronoun; die, das)
werden
to be (passive auxiliary + past participle)
fair
fair
der Lohn
the wage
Questions & Answers about Der faire Lohn ist gestern bezahlt worden.
Why does this sentence use worden instead of geworden?
In German, when forming the passive voice in the perfect tense (Perfekt Passiv), you use worden as the past participle of the auxiliary verb werden. You only use geworden when werden is the main verb of the sentence meaning 'to become' (for example: Er ist alt geworden). Because bezahlen is the main action here, the passive auxiliary drops the ge-.
The English translation says 'was paid'. Why does the German sentence use the perfect tense (ist ... bezahlt worden)?
While you could use the simple past (Präteritum) and say Der faire Lohn wurde gestern bezahlt, spoken German strongly prefers the perfect tense for past events. The perfect passive (ist bezahlt worden) is extremely common in everyday conversation, even though English naturally translates it as 'was paid' rather than 'has been paid'.
Why is the adjective ending faire instead of fairer?
Lohn is a masculine noun. Because it is preceded by the definite article Der, the adjective takes the weak ending -e in the nominative case. If there were no article (meaning 'fair wage' in general), the adjective would have to take the strong ending -er to show the masculine gender, making it fairer Lohn.
Where do time adverbs like gestern go in a complex passive sentence?
The standard sentence structure rules still apply here. The time adverb gestern comes immediately after the conjugated verb in the second position (ist). The remaining parts of the passive verb phrase (bezahlt worden) are pushed all the way to the end of the sentence.
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