# انكسر / مكسور



## Bigtime

إنكسر الباب  = The door is broken (present passive voice)
 الباب مكسور  = The door was Broken (past passive voice)


إندلعت الحرب = The war was broken out. (past passive voice)
الحرب مندلعه  = The war is broken out.  (present passive voice)


Are both sentences in Passive voice?
What do we call those sentence in Arabic?
Thanks.


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## dkarjala

Bigtime said:


> إنكسر الباب  = The door is broken (present passive voice)
> الباب مكسور  = The door was Broken (past passive voice)



The first phrase is not present passive, it is present perfect (the Arabic "past" tense) and means "the door _has_ broken". It is not a passive verb, it is a verb from the انفعل stem, or _wazn_, which expresses an action without the agent (who or whatever broke the door isn't mentioned).

The second sentence is a present tense verbless sentence, meaning "the door _is_ broken" and describes the door, just like "the door is blue/small/old/broken". Neither of these sentences/verbs is passive, but the word _maksuur_ *is* a "passive participle", i.e. an adjective with a passive verbal meaning. And its translation is passive in English.




> إندلعت الحرب = The war was broken out. (past passive voice)
> الحرب مندلعه  = The war is broken out.  (present passive voice)
> 
> 
> Are both sentences in Passive voice?
> What do we call those sentence in Arabic?
> Thanks.



The first sentence, as above, is an *active* verb from انفعل, which is correctly translated as "War broke out". 

The second sentence is also a present tense, active sentence with an _active_ participle, unlike مكسور, which was actually passive. It should mean "War is breaking out".

*PASSIVE: The person or thing being affected is the subject of the verb

أُغلِقَ البابُ
كُتِبَت رسالةٌ

The door was closed
A letter was written

ACTIVE: The person or thing doing the action is the subject of the verb

أَغلَقَ الرجلُ البابَ
كَتَبَت المرأةُ الرسالةَ

Notice that in Arabic (فصحى) the difference is in the vowels on the verb and the إعراب on the noun being affected



*In short, none of your above examples was actuallyexcept the adjective مكسور.

The passive voice in Arabic is called المبني للمجهول = the construction for the anonymous (agent)

The active voice is called المبني للمعلوم = the construction for the known (agent).

You asked "what do we call those sentences"...can you be more specific? 

Hope this helps!

P.S. Note that verbs from انفعل almost never mention the person causing the effect, so they will almost never be passive.


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## Bigtime

Dkarjala, thank you very much.  This is great explanation. I am really thankful.

Can we consider as a rule, if the verb in the Arabic sentence start with a (fat7ah) is an Active sentence as in أَغلَقَ الرجلُ البابَ
and a Passive sentence if it starts with (damah) as in   أُغلِقَ البابُ
أُThank you


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## Bigtime

Also, as in this example 
*ذَبلت الوردهُ *
Is it Active sentence. Present perfect.  "The rose has withered"

Thanks


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## dkarjala

Bigtime said:


> Dkarjala, thank you very much.  This is great explanation. I am really thankful.
> 
> Can we consider as a rule, if the verb in the Arabic sentence start with a (fat7ah) is an Active sentence as in أَغلَقَ الرجلُ البابَ
> and a Passive sentence if it starts with (damah) as in   أُغلِقَ البابُ
> أُThank you



A *past tense verb* in the *passive* will have a _Damma_ for it's first vowel or vowels and _kasra _on the *second *root letter:

فُعِلَ، فُعِّلَ، فوعِلَ، أُفعِلَ، تُفُعِّلَ، تُفوعِلَ، اُنفُعِلَ، اُفتُعِلَ، ،اُستُفعِلَ
(you won't see some of these hardly at all)

A *present tense verb* in the *passive *will have a _Damma_ on the prefix and be followed by _fatHas _until the final vowel*:
*
يُفعَلُ، يُفَعَّلُ، يُفاعَلُ، يُفعَلُ، يُتَفَعَّلُ، يُتَفاعَلُ، يُنفَعَلُ، يُفتَعَلُ، يُستَفعَلُ


If you have an *active* verb, it will look like the regular dictionary form. Also note that in the فعل and أفعل _wazn, _the *present passive *is identical.
If anyone sees a mistake, please correct it.

Best of luck!


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## dkarjala

Bigtime said:


> Also, as in this example
> *ذَبلت الوردهُ *
> Is it Active sentence. Present perfect.  "The rose has withered"
> 
> Thanks



Yes, there is noone else "withering" the rose, it is the subject of the verb and thus مرفوع


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## Bigtime

Dkarjala, Excellent clarification.  As they say "you hit the nail on the head".

q1. Use have described the passive sentences through أوزان 
 which really make great sense in very simple format.  Is there a list of أوزان a long with a sentence with a translation to get a clear picture?
as in the below example:
*
يُفعَلُ
يُكَنس البيتُ يومياً
The house is swept daily.*

From your explanation this is Passive, present tense sentence.

Awaiting your response

Thanks.


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## Tracer

Bigtime said:


> إندلعت الحرب = The war was broken out. (past passive voice)
> الحرب مندلعه  = The war is broken out.  (present passive voice)



Back to your original post:

I wanted to point out the 2 English sentences above are incorrect and cannot be written this way (they don't mean anything).

The problem is that you appear to be confusing 2 very different verbs:      TO BREAK is a completely different verb from TO BREAK OUT.  
As you know, adding a preposition to a verb (usually called a "verbal phrase")  nearly always changes the meaning of the "base" verb radically......in the same way that adding the "forms" to an Arabic verb can radically change the meaning of the base verb.

TO BREAK means to smash something, to reduce something to pieces and similar meanings
TO BREAK OUT never means to smash.  It means TO START SOMETHING ABRUPTLY with very little warning, to ERUPT,  and so on.

TO BREAK can be active or passive.  TO BREAK OUT can never be passive.

Hope this helps.


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## إسكندراني

اندلعت الحرب war broke out
الحرب تندلع war is breaking out
الحرب مندلعة war has broken out , there is a state of warfare


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## Tracer

إسكندراني said:


> اندلعت الحرب war broke out
> الحرب تندلع war is breaking out
> الحرب مندلعة war has broken out , there is a state of warfare



Thanks for the Arabic translations.  As you can see, none of the English sentences are (or could be) in the passive even though the Arabic ones might be.


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## Bigtime

Tracer, from your intervention, do you mean that we can't use phrasal verbs in passive form? 
Thanks.


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## ayed

Bigtime said:


> Tracer, from your intervention, do you mean that we can't use phrasal verbs in passive form?
> Thanks.


لايمكن أن يصاغ الفعل اللازم إلى فعل مبني للمجهول


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## Tracer

Bigtime said:


> Tracer, from your intervention, do you mean that we can't use phrasal verbs in passive form?
> Thanks.



_(I wish it were that easy)..._No, all I'm saying is the verb (to break out) can't be passive.  There are many "phrasal verbs" that can be passive.  For example,

TO LOG OUT = to write your name on a sheet showing the time you left work.  You can easily say:  "John *was logged out *by his manager because he forgot to do so."

TO BLOW UP....He *was blown up *by the roadside bomb.    TO CHEER UP....He *was cheered up *by the millions his uncle left him.  الخ


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## Bigtime

I see.  Thanks Tracer for the clarification.
Ayed, Sorry I didn't get what you wrote. لايمكن أن يصاغ الفعل اللازم إلى فعل مبني للمجهول .  Would you please elaborate on that?


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## dkarjala

Bigtime said:


> I see.  Thanks Tracer for the clarification.
> Ayed, Sorry I didn't get what you wrote. لايمكن أن يصاغ الفعل اللازم إلى فعل مبني للمجهول .  Would you please elaborate on that?



Hi again. Glad to see the nice additions.

Bigtime, what Ayed was saying is that an _intransitive_ (قاصرة/لازمة) verb cannot be made passive. Only a transitive verb (معتدى) can.

When you see a verb think of its roles, like a play.

See = requires a seer and something seen
Kill = requires a killer and something killed

BUT

Wither = requires ONLY a witherer
Walk = requires ONLY a walker

This last kind of verb (that can't take a direct object / مفعول به) can NEVER be made passive, because it wouldn't mean anything.


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## ayed

dkarjala said:


> Hi again. Glad to see the nice additions.
> 
> Bigtime, what Ayed was saying is that an _intransitive_ (قاصرة/لازمة) verb cannot be made passive. Only a transitive verb (معتدى) can.
> 
> When you see a verb think of it's roles, like a play.
> 
> See = requires a seer and something seen
> Kill = requires a killer and something killed
> 
> BUT
> 
> Wither = requires ONLY a witherer
> Walk = requires ONLY a walker
> 
> This last kind of verb (that can't take a direct object / معفول به) can NEVER be made passive, because it wouldn't mean anything.



 exactly so..


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## Abu Talha

dkarjala said:


> BUT
> 
> Wither = requires ONLY a witherer
> Walk = requires ONLY a walker
> 
> This last kind of verb (that can't take a direct object / مفعول به) can NEVER be made passive, because it wouldn't mean anything.


The problem is that English often uses the same verb form transitively and intransitively. For example,

The man walked. //Intransitive verb: to walk. The man is one who is doing the act of walking
The man walked the dog. //Transitive verb: to walk someone. The dog is the one doing the act of walking. (The man is probably also walking but that is only implicit.)

So we can say: "The dog was walked [by the man]." in the passive.

Even if the verb is only used intransitively like "They traveled towards the city." You can say in the passive (at least colloquially) "The city was traveled towards." 

I think only a verb like "to die" can't be used passively. For "He died of natural causes." You can only say "There was/occurred dying by natural causes" which, I don't think, is a true passive.


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## dkarjala

Abu Talha said:


> The problem is that English often uses the same verb form transitively and intransitively. For example,
> 
> The man walked. //Intransitive verb: to walk. The man is one who is doing the act of walking
> The man walked the dog. //Transitive verb: to walk someone. The dog is the one doing the act of walking. (The man is probably also walking but that is only implicit.)



True, but they are merely homonyms, they have different etymologies. The intransitive verb is a regular verb, whereas the transitive form is a denominative verb from the noun "walk" (similar to verbs like "to boot, to phone" and means to "make/let walk"). By putting a word in question in a sentence and checking its roles, you can determine easily if it is intransitive or transitive.



> Even if the verb is only used intransitively like "They traveled towards the city." You can say in the passive (at least colloquially) "The city was traveled towards."



True, but this is only because you included a prepositional phrase. You aren't putting the verb "travel" in the passive, you are reanalyzing the verb and preposition as a single phrasal verb, "travel towards", having a direct object. Then the direct object can move to the subject position with passive syntax.

On the other hand, you can say "he is well-traveled", but that's a whole other issue involving the weird semi-ergative use of perfect participles in English.



> I think only a verb like "to die" can't be used passively. For "He died of natural causes." You can only say "There was/occurred dying by natural causes" which, I don't think, is a true passive.



You are right in terms of what is practical for a learner of English; however, as you see, the verbs you listed (walk, travel towards) are NOT the same words as the original 'walk' or 'travel'. As long as you check the 'roles' that the verb has, and it has only one, it can't be made passive.


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## Abu Talha

Thanks for the explanations, dkarjala.


dkarjala said:


> True, but they are merely homonyms, they have different etymologies. The intransitive verb is a regular verb, whereas the transitive form is a denominative verb from the noun "walk" (similar to verbs like "to boot, to phone" and means to "make/let walk"). By putting a word in question in a sentence and checking its roles, you can determine easily if it is intransitive or transitive


In many cases, it does seem like a feature in English's grammar. For example,

The door opened. // Active intransitive. The subject underwent the act of being opened.
The man opened the door. // Active transitive. The object underwent the act of being opened.
The door was opened. // Passive voice.

The same thing occurs in "to log out" like Tracer notes in post #13.

"I logged out." //Active intransitive.
"I logged him out." //Active transitive.

Even for very new verbs that have not yet become standard, it is apparent to the English speaker that he can do this for some of them:
"Let's sync up to discuss the new project." //Intransitive (I think).
"I synced up my phone with my computer." //Transitive.

EDIT: "sync" itself is not too new as its just an abbreviation of synchronize. I'll try to think of a really new verb...


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## dkarjala

dkarjala said:


> Only a transitive verb (معتدى) can.



Oops! Transitive is مُتَعَدٍّ


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