Professional Documents
Culture Documents
University of Pedagogy
20 December, 2010
ABSTRACT
Look at the picture above and make two sentences to describe what you see in it,
Are those “He is bitten by a dog.” or “A dog bites him.” and “Anh ta bị cắn bởi một
con chó.”, “Anh ta bị chó cắn.” or “Con chó cắn anh ta.”? Which one sounds natural?
All of them but “Anh ta bị cắn bởi một con chó“. What makes this unnaturalness? It is
that the mistake in translating a passive meaning sentence from English into
Vietnamese, which most English learners, even the advanced ones, often encounter.
For the purpose of helping learners avoid this common mistake, my paper will
The research has three main parts. In the first part, there are some general concepts
of the passive voice to give the readers a clearer picture about this topic. In the
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second one, the paper is about this phenomenon in each of these two languages
accompanied with the comparison between the passive voice in English and
Vietnamese, especially the form, usage, frequency of using and genre distinction.
The last part will see the implication of this paper for teaching and learning English.
CONCEPT
What is voice?
acting and what thing or person is being acted upon.” (Crystal, 2002) or
“In grammar, the voice (also called diathesis) of a verb describes the relationship
between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified
by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the
action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or
Voice”, 2009)
sentence or clause denotes the recipient of the action rather than the performer.”
(“English Passive Voice”, 2009). Take “He is bitten by a dog.” as an example: “He” is
the recipient of the action “bite” and the performer is “the dog”. It can be considered
as a passive voice.
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PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
Structure
The passive voice is commonly formed by combining a form of the "to be verb" with
the past participle (P.P) of the main verb BE + P.P. We call this type as “Be passive”.
In addition to this particular type, English learners should also pay attention to these
can come.
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never found.
My bicycle must have been stolen.
Past infinitive
4 The window should have been cleaned
must have, should have, …
yesterday.
at 7PM.
I don’t like being told what to do.
seventh birthday.
V-ing with passive
8 The grass need cutting.
meaning
This problem can be solved.
9 Modal verbs
He must be punished.
Sometimes, “get” is often used in place of “be” in the passive voice. We call it as
Usage
The passive voice emphasizes the person or the recipients of the action. These are
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Firstly, the performer is unknown, irrelevant, or obvious. (English Passive voice:
“The first edition of Franklin's earliest writings was published in 2000.” (2)
In (1) we don’t know the ones who first planted grape. In (2) Franklin is obvious, we
Secondly, the performer is less important than the action. For instance:
The action of keeping vegetables in the fridge is more important than the fact that
Thirdly, the one who does the action is not wanted to be mentioned.
The troublemaker is concealed but the fact that the glass is broken is still
transferred.
Next, the recipient is the main topic, for instance, the subject that the author wants to
discuss in a sentence should occur near the beginning in the topic position where
the reader can find it easily. For example, In “Children must be protested.”, the
In addition, the same subject for two distinguished action is used. (English Passive
voice: 2009):
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Finally, “Get passive” is used in informal speech and writing to express: misfortune,
accomplishment, arrangement, and work completed. Take “He got told to send a
Structure
Nó bị cô giáo phạt.”
“ĐƯỢC”/”BỊ” + VERB.
In Vietnamese, “được” brings a positive meaning for the passive voice and passive
“Con bị ăn hiếp.”
Passive voice in Vietnamese includes these following types (Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt :
2008)
Types Examples
1 The passive voice with
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followed by any
dư luận phản đổi.
others.
Anh ấy được nhà nọ mời đi dự tiệc.
- “bị” / “được” is
followed by a verb
Ngôi nhà được xây dựng cách đây
The passive voice with “bị” /
2 20 năm.
“được” has no objects.
Nó bị ăn hiếp.
Kết luận rút ra từ những dẫn chứng
này.
The passive voice has no
Kết luận đươc rút ra từ những dẫn
3 “bị” / “được” but ““bị” / “được
chứng này.
can be added to that voice.
Con thuyền trôi ra đảo.
However, just like the passive voice in English, the one in Vietnamese also has
Not all passive meanings are recognized with the two words above. We have some
kinds of special passive voice which there is no “được” or “bị” convey passive
“Quần áo giặt bằng máy” (The clothes are washed by the washing machines)
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And vice versa, some cases of passive voice in Vietnamese contain “bị”/”được” but
“Nhan sắc của nhỏ này hơi bị được đó nha.” (She is beautiful.)
Usage
Passive voice is not the best choice for Vietnamese people’s daily conversations.
However, it is used by many writers, scientists. These are some cases that
Firstly, they want to emphasize the results of the action. “150 người bị bão cuốn trôi,
200 hộ dân mất nhà cửa.” “150 người” and “200 hộ dân” are emphasized by using
passive voice.
Secondly, they do not know the performers. “Cậu ấy vừa bị mất laptop đấy.” – We
Lastly, they want to keep the same performer for two different actions “Vắc-xin điều
trị H1N1 đã được bào chế và đưa vào sử dụng.” – “bào chế” and “đưa vào sử dụng”
Genre distinction
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Be passives are high frequency in abstract and technical genres, especially official
documents and academic prose - typically used to impose an objective, formal style.
Written genres show low frequency of get passives, which are most likely to appear
in spoken genres. This suggests that get passives are more informal in style.
(Crystal : 2002). Vietnamese people do not often use passive voice in their daily
Frequency
The frequency of passive use in English is far higher, and many writers agree that
Form
The differences in form are because of the different language families and language
English Meaning
be + past participle “được” / “bị” + verb
The forms of "to be" and the No changes are made in the forms
tomorrow. changes)
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In addition, we can draw out that the Vietnamese structure of the passive voice is “S
O” as English. For example, for “She is given a lovely doll by her mother.”, we have
to translate as “Cô ấy được mẹ tặng một con búp bê rất đẹp” but not “Cô ấy được
Firstly, teachers have to pay much attention to help the student realize the passive
voices easily because sometimes they are in some special cases as I mentioned
above. Moreover, helping them with a suitable translation instead of words by words
translation is necessary.
Secondly, this paper will help students develop their linguistic skills in both English
and Vietnamese. Learning theories and having a bigger picture by studying about
the contrastive points between these two languages passive voice can make them
easily remember.
Lastly, for one who is practicing translating. This paper alsos help you know more
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CONCLUSION
So far we have just discussed some contrastive points of the passive voice in
English and Vietnamese. It helps us draw out one of the major causes of
as well as people who practice translating as their profession. I hope that my paper
can help the English learners, the teachers and the translators have a clear picture
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REFERENCES
Cao Xuan Hao. (1999). Tiếng Việt – Mấy vấn đề ngữ âm, ngữ pháp, ngữ nghĩa.
Crystal. (2002). Exploring Grammar in Context. Ho Chi Minh City: The Youth
Publisher
English passive voice. Wikipedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved November 27, 2009,
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice
Press
Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. Wikipedia Foundation, Inc. Retrieved December 1st, 2008,
from http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngu_phap_tieng_viet
Simon. (2003). Grammar Power. Ho Chi Minh City: The Youth Publisher
Thomson, A.J & Martinet, A.V. (2000). Practical English Grammar. Oxford: Oxford
University Press
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