Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form the true passive voice with “essere” and use the far more common “si” impersonal/passive construction.

Lesson Explanation

The true passive voice, formed with essere + past participle + da (by), exists in Italian but — like Spanish’s ser passive — is used less often than in English, and sounds noticeably formal/journalistic:

Il libro è stato scritto da Dante. — The book was written by Dante.

The past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject, following the same essere-agreement rule from Part 4, Lesson 2.

Far more common in everyday Italian is the si construction, structurally identical to Spanish’s se passive: it sidesteps naming who performed the action:

Si parla italiano qui. — Italian is spoken here.
Si vendono case. — Houses are sold.
Si cercano dipendenti. — Employees are being sought.

The verb agrees in number with the noun that follows (si parla singular, si vendono plural) — the noun functions as the grammatical subject, even coming after the verb.

A genuinely important, related use is the impersonal si, equivalent to English “one” or generic “you/they” — and one of the single most useful phrases a learner can memorize: Come si dice “hello” in italiano? (How do you say “hello” in Italian?) A genuinely distinctive detail with no Spanish equivalent: when the impersonal si is combined with a reflexive verb, it becomes ci si to avoid repeating “si” twice: Ci si alza presto qui. (One gets up early here.)

Practice Questions