True Passive vs. Passive Se
When do you use the true passive construction (ser + past participle) vs. the passive Se construction (se + third person verb + object)?
Are they completely interchangeable? Which is prefered in what circumstances?
Se habla español (from a commercial, meaning "Spanish is spoken")
Español es hablado (means the same as above?)
3 Answers
And don't forget the "empty third person", which is very common in spoken Spanish:
Roban el coche. - They robbed the car, ie the car was stolen.
El coche fue robado. - The car was robbed.
El coche se robó.
I hazard to say that these are in order of informal to formal. But generally, I believe the differences between construction have to do with formal/informal, written/spoken.
When do you use the true passive construction (ser + past participle) vs. the passive Se construction (se + third person verb + object)?
The "se" used for passives is historically older than the periphrastic construction that you call "true passive". Why is the new construction the "true" one?
I can't give you a simple and definite rule, but the periphrastic passive is not generally used for states or verbs without an specific achievement or outcome. Thus, "El puente fue construido" is fine, since the constructing ends when the bridge is finished, but "El español es hablado" does not refer to any specific outcome, but a generic non-specific action, so here it sounds rather weird.
Except for some unusual verbs that do not follow the general trend, including fashionable copied structured from English and ancient Spanish expressions, the periphrastic passive is subject to more restrictions than the "normal" passive reflexive, and it is used frequently only in newspapers and political speech (not so much in literature); the latter is also much more common in spoken Spanish (the passive with "se" is equally used in formal and literary Spanish). In any case, there is a certain preference for one construction over the other with a few verbs, and these have to be learnt by practising.
Besides the two constructions mentioned above, Spanish uses the third person plural too instead of the English passive: "Me han robado la cartera" (I've been stolen my wallet), but you didn't ask about this.
Active construction:
Juan toma una foto. (Juan takes a photo)
Passive construction:
Una foto es tomada por Juan. (A photo is taken by Juan)
As you can see, in the passive construction, the O.D. becomes the subject.
This construction is not as usual in Spanish as it is in English.
Se + third person verb + object:
Se vende esta casa.
This is not a passive construction, but an impersonal construction.
Instead of saying:
Yo vendo esta casa
You say:
Se vende esta casa.
"Se" is an impersonal form of subject.
It is similar to "For sale"
