{"id":16926,"date":"2012-10-04T19:57:18","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T17:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=16926"},"modified":"2017-10-20T14:22:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T12:22:21","slug":"french-vs-english-passive-voice-exceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-vs-english-passive-voice-exceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"French Grammar vs. English Grammar: Passive Voice Exceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<p><strong>It is an undeniable fact: English grammar is way more flexible (and in a way more &#8220;relaxed&#8221;) than its French counterpart. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>But that, of course, is not necessarily a French disadvantage: It is no pure coincidence that French has always been celebrated as &#8220;the language of clarity and precision&#8221;, and was for many centuries the language of choice in diplomacy between several European nations.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Today, we&#8217;ll provide an example that showcases a sentence construction which, although permissible in English grammar, is a definite no-no (or a <em>&#8220;non non&#8221;<\/em>) in <em>la grammaire fran\u00e7aise<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Consider the two following sentence constructions in English:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Romeo sent a letter to Juliette.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Romeo sent Juliette a letter.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In both sentences, the word &#8220;letter&#8221; is <strong><em>l&#8217;object direct <\/em><\/strong>(the direct object) whereas &#8220;family&#8221; is <strong><em>l&#8217;object indirect <\/em><\/strong>(the indirect object.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In a <strong>passive sentence<\/strong>, both ways are also correct in English:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A letter was sent to Juliette by Romeo.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Juliette was sent a letter by Romeo.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, if we move to French and try to say the same, we definitely can&#8217;t say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><del><strong>Juliette a\u00a0\u00e9t\u00e9 envoy\u00e9e une lettre par Romeo<\/strong><\/del><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>But you could say:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><em><strong>Une lettre a\u00a0\u00e9t\u00e9 envoy\u00e9e\u00a0\u00e0 Juliette par Romeo.<\/strong><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The reason is that French grammar only allows this form of prepositional object construction: <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Envoyer<\/strong><\/em><\/span> &lt;direct object&gt;\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>\u00e0<\/strong><\/em><\/span> &lt;indirect object.&gt;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<em><strong>Jean a envoy\u00e9 une lettre\u00a0\u00e0 Juliette<\/strong><\/em>&#8221; is correct.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<del><em><strong>Jean a envoy\u00e9 Juliette une lettre<\/strong><\/em><\/del>&#8221; is definitely incorrect.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>You may rarely hear the latter construction in <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/the-best-five-french-movies-of-the-week\/\">French movies<\/a><\/strong>. But don&#8217;t let that fool you, because that could be just a way to portray or hint at an uneducated character, for example!<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Other common French verbs than &#8220;<em><strong>envoyer<\/strong><\/em>&#8221; (to send) for which the above applies are: <em><strong>apprendre<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0<\/strong><\/em>&#8230; (to teach&#8230; to&#8230;); <em><strong>demander<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to ask&#8230; &#8230;); <em><strong>dire<\/strong><\/em>&#8230; <em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to tell&#8230; to&#8230;);\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e9crire<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to write&#8230; to&#8230;); <em><strong>donner<\/strong><\/em>&#8230; <em><strong>\u00e0<\/strong><\/em>&#8230; (to give&#8230; to&#8230;);\u00a0<em><strong>laisser<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to leave&#8230; to&#8230;); <em><strong>montrer<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to show&#8230; to&#8230;); <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/how-to-conjugate-the-french-verb-pardonner-to-forgive\/\">pardonner<\/a><\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to forgive&#8230; to&#8230;); <em><strong>promettre<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;\u00a0<em><strong>\u00e0&#8230; <\/strong><\/em>(to promise&#8230; to&#8230;), etc.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"350\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/2803604591_985067c508_z-350x350.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image tmp-hide-img\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/2803604591_985067c508_z-350x350.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/2803604591_985067c508_z-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2012\/10\/2803604591_985067c508_z.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>It is an undeniable fact: English grammar is way more flexible (and in a way more &#8220;relaxed&#8221;) than its French counterpart. But that, of course, is not necessarily a French disadvantage: It is no pure coincidence that French has always been celebrated as &#8220;the language of clarity and precision&#8221;, and was for many centuries the&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/french-vs-english-passive-voice-exceptions\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":23765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[250074,346,250075,250073,55189,250076,3343],"class_list":["post-16926","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-grammar","category-vocabulary","tag-francais-vs-anglais","tag-french-grammar","tag-french-grammar-vs-english-grammar","tag-french-vs-enlgish","tag-grammaire-francaise","tag-passive-sentences","tag-passive-voice"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16926"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28440,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16926\/revisions\/28440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}