Este fue un problema muy difícil. Passive or Active Voice?

Question

I found this sentence "Este fue un problema muy difícil" in the SD Passive voice grammar exercise page. I think this is an active voice sentence, as it is in English "This was a very difficult problem." However the answer said it should be a passive voice sentence, because some action was done to the word "Este." This does not make sense to me unless in Spanish, all descriptive sentences such as "This is a nice day", "She is very wise" are all passive sentences. I would appreciate some clarification here.

Muchicimas Gracias,

Answer 1

Total nonsense. Syntactically, this is no different from the sentence "She was very beautiful." There is no action involved. The "ser" is a simple copulative/stative verb.

• thank you Samdie. That's just what I thought, but I didn't have the knowledge to express my thoughts. What you, so simply, say really helps me here - billygoat Feb 7, 2012
• Samdie, when you said ''total nonsense'' were you referring to all our posts/responses please? Or simply to what the questioner had asserted must be right? - FELIZ77 Feb 7, 2012
• Sorry, I was refering to attempts to interpret is a passive construction. It's all well and good to think of "ser" as some kind of indicator but one should not lose sight of the basic meaning of the sentence. - samdie Feb 8, 2012

Answer 2

Jasmine, I'm with you on this one. I'm not 100% sure of the grammatical classifications but I can't see how this sentence can be classed as the passive voice. To me it's just an impersonal sentence that makes a statement but doesn't include an agent. The passive voice (I think!!) is as you describe above. I will watch this one lol!

Answer 3

Yo diría que no es pasiva. Es una frase atributiva.

Un ejemplo de pasiva: "El problema fue resuelto rápidamente (por los alumnos)".

• good example! thank you - billygoat Feb 7, 2012
• Gracias a ti :) - Cordobesa Feb 7, 2012
• great example - Izanoni1 Feb 7, 2012
• Gracias, Izanoni :) - Cordobesa Feb 7, 2012

Answer 4

This is a passive sentence. The definition of a passive sentence is that you make the object of the sentence into the subject of the sentence. In this sentence, problema is the subject but it is the object. If you had said, "Este fue un dificil problema para mi," it would have been active. Now, "para mi" is the object and the subject is este.

• Exactly - Jeremias Feb 7, 2012

Answer 5

I agree with billy - it is not passive

I wish Lazarus would "come to the rescue"

There are many threads about Passive an active Try to search for them.

Try this one

and this one

Answer 6

To echo what others have already said, this is not an example of the passive voice. As Samdie mentioned, the verb "ser" is functioning as a copula. In this case, it functions to identify the subject. Similar copular uses might be:

• Este es un ejemplo de un verbo copulativo → This is an example of a copular verb.
• La obesidad es un problema grave a nivel mundial → Obesity is a serious problem worldwide.
• La defensa fue su mejor ataque → Defense was his best offense.
• El cáncer fue su última batalla → Cancer was his final battle.

On the other hand, the verb ser can also be used as an auxiliary verb in conjunction with another verb—the main verb—to form a sentence in the passive voice. This type of verb phrase in Spanish is referred to as la pasiva perifrástica.

One other factor to consider when discussing the passive voice has to do with the fact that passively constructed sentences are generally only formed from verbs which take a direct object in the active voice (i.e. transitive verbs). To help elucidate why exactly it might not be possible to consider the original sentence a passive voicing, it might be helpful to compare the active and passive voicings of the sentence offered by Cordobesa above.

Verb: Resolver

• Active: Los alumnos resolvieron el problema → The students solved the problem
• Passive: El problema fue resuelto rápidamente (por los alumnos) → The problem was solved by the students

A bit of grammar review:

In the active voice, we find that the subject (los alumnos/the students) causes or initiates the action or event described by the verb. The roll it plays in the sentence is to act as an agent to bring about some change (described by the verb). The entity, idea or other intangible thing being acted upon or changed plays the roll of "patient" because it receives the action of the verb. In actively constructed sentences, we call the patient a "direct object."

To summarize, we see that in active constructions, the agent and the subject are the same (that is the agent acts as an active participant in the change). In passive constructions, on the other hand, the patient (or direct object of the active sentence) becomes the subject so that the change is described in terms of something that "is done" or "was done" (by the agent). For example:

Active:

The students (agent) caused the problem (patient)

Los estudiantes (agent) provocaron el problema (patient)

Passive:

The problem (patient) was caused by the students (agent)

El problema fue provocado por los estudiantes (agent)

If we analyze our sentences, we can see that the basic formula for a passive verb phrase is as follows:

Spanish: Ser + past participle

English: to be + past participle

Revisiting your original sentence, we notice that the verb "ser" (fue) is not followed by a verb in the past participle but a noun phrase (un problema difícil). Because of this, it should not be difficult to see that the original sentence should not be considered a passive construction.

• ¡Muy buena explicación! :) - Cordobesa Feb 7, 2012

Answer 7

Thanks both for the input, however, I cannot quite agree with your analysis. Based on my understanding on "passive voice" in languages in general (English included), the key for passive voice is some action is done to an object. If there is no action done, in other word, no "transitive verb" in a sentence, there is no passive voice. In this sentence, "fue" is an intransitive verb, so this should not be a passive voice. Does this make sense?

Answer 8

It is definitely a sentence using the passive voice which would always take the verb ser

Este fue un problema muy difícil

Try substituting the word it. for this. eg: It was a very difficult problem. The problem did not actually do anything it was not active

Both this and it are conjugated to the impersonal third person singular of the verb ser in the preterite/simple past: fue

An active sentence would be The boy broke the plate.

The passive form of the same sentence would be:

The plate was broken

Here is a link to the SpanishDict reference section which provides an overview of the subject: link text

I hope this helps, Jeremias

• All passives take "ser" but not all uses of "ser are passive. - samdie Feb 7, 2012
• Okay thank You very much Samdie :) - FELIZ77 Feb 7, 2012