Passive voice

As in other languages, passive sentences emphasize the receiver of the action, by making what is normally the object of the verb its subject. Here is the standard formula for changing the voice of a verb into passive:

As an example, the passive form of the English verb “killed” is “was killed”. “Killed” is equal to the Persian “کُشت”. To make it passive, we first find the past participle of the verb “کُشتَن” which is “کُشته”. Then we have to make the corresponding form of the verb “کشت” from the infinitive “شدن”. That means we have to find the past simple form of the verb “شدن” for the third person singular, which would be “شد”. The final product will be the combination of the two, which is “کشته شد”.

Here is an example of a compound verb in passive voice: “نشان دادن” (“to show”).

There are two major groups of verbs that do not follow the general passive formula.

1- Some (and only some) of the compound verbs whose verbal part is from the infinitive “زدن” (“to hit”). To make these verbs passive, all you have to do is change the verb from “زدن” to “خوردن” (“to eat, to be hit”).

2- In a compound verb whose verb part is “کردن” (to do, to make), the verbal part is replaced with “شدن” (to become). Another way to put it is that the participle of the main verb is omitted. For instance, the passive form of the verb “نابود کرد” ("destroyed"), if we follow the default rule, will be “نابود کرده شد”, but we should omit the word “کرده”, which gives us “نابود شد”.