The Dutch passive voice
Dutch builds its passive with two different auxiliary verbs, and choosing between them is the whole game. Worden + past participle describes an action as it happens (Het huis wordt gebouwd — "the house is being built"). Zijn + past participle describes the finished result (Het huis is gebouwd — "the house is built / has been built"). English uses "to be" for both, which is exactly why learners get them confused.
The worden-passive: ongoing action
The default passive uses worden ("to become"). It presents the action as in progress or as a general fact, with the focus on the process rather than the result. Conjugate worden for the tense and person, and put the past participle at the end of the clause.
| Tense | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| Present | De brief wordt geschreven. | The letter is being written. |
| Past | De brief werd geschreven. | The letter was being written. |
| Perfect | De brief is geschreven. | The letter has been written. |
| Future | De brief zal geschreven worden. | The letter will be written. |
Notice the perfect row: the passive perfect drops worden and uses zijn as the auxiliary — is geschreven, not is geworden geschreven. Historically the participle here is geworden, but modern Dutch omits it, so the passive perfect looks identical to the zijn-passive below. Context tells them apart.
The zijn-passive: the resulting state
Use zijn + participle when you want to describe the state that an action produced, not the action itself. The action is over; you are reporting its result.
| Worden (action) | Zijn (state) |
|---|---|
| De deur wordt gesloten. — The door is being closed. | De deur is gesloten. — The door is closed. |
| Het eten wordt bereid. — The food is being prepared. | Het eten is bereid. — The food is prepared / ready. |
| De winkel wordt geopend. — The shop is being opened. | De winkel is geopend. — The shop is open. |
The test: if you can add "right now, in progress" it is worden; if you mean "and it stays that way", it is zijn. De winkel wordt geopend is the moment of opening; De winkel is geopend is the ongoing state of being open.
Naming the agent: the door-phrase
To say who performs the action, add door ("by") plus the agent. This corresponds exactly to English "by".
| Dutch | English |
|---|---|
| Het huis wordt door een aannemer gebouwd. | The house is being built by a contractor. |
| De brief werd door mijn collega geschreven. | The letter was written by my colleague. |
| De patiënt is door de dokter onderzocht. | The patient has been examined by the doctor. |
As in English, the door-phrase is optional and often left out precisely because the passive lets you avoid naming the doer: Er wordt aan gewerkt ("it's being worked on") deliberately says nothing about who.
The subjectless passive with er
Dutch can make a passive out of an intransitive verb — a verb with no object — where English cannot. There is no noun to promote to subject, so the sentence opens with the placeholder er. This construction describes an activity in the abstract.
| Dutch | English (literal → natural) |
|---|---|
| Er wordt gedanst. | There is dancing. → People are dancing. |
| Er wordt hard gewerkt. | There is hard working. → Everyone is working hard. |
| Er werd veel gepraat over de plannen. | There was much talking about the plans. |
If another element opens the sentence, er can disappear: Op het feest werd veel gedanst ("at the party there was a lot of dancing"). This is one of the five jobs of er covered on the er page.
Turning an active sentence into a passive one
The mechanical conversion has three steps. Take De timmerman bouwt het huis ("the carpenter builds the house"):
| Step | Result |
|---|---|
| 1. The object becomes the subject. | het huis moves to the front |
| 2. Add worden, conjugated to match, and send the main verb to the end as a participle. | Het huis wordt … gebouwd |
| 3. Turn the old subject into a door-phrase (or drop it). | Het huis wordt door de timmerman gebouwd. |
The participle formation follows the ordinary rules — ge- prefix, no ge- after be-/ver-/ont- — set out on the perfect tense page. The end-of-clause position of the participle is standard Dutch word order.
When Dutch uses the passive
The passive is far more common in formal and written Dutch — news, official letters, instructions, academic writing — than in casual speech, where an active sentence with the vague subject je or ze often does the same job (Ze hebben de weg afgesloten rather than De weg is afgesloten). Recognising and producing the passive comfortably is a B2-level skill, which is why it appears in the B2 guide.
Belgian usage. The passive works identically in Belgium. The one thing to note is worden itself: Flemish speech sometimes clips it ('t wordt gedaan) and, as with the perfect, everyday southern Dutch may lean on active constructions with ze or men. The standard written passive is the same across the language area.
Common mistakes. (1) Using zijn for an ongoing action — De brief is geschreven op dit moment is wrong; a process in progress needs wordt. (2) Copying English "to be" everywhere and never reaching for worden. (3) Adding a stray geworden in the perfect passive — modern Dutch says is geschreven, not is geschreven geworden. More traps are collected on common mistakes learners make.