Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. A verb in such languages is usually in the active voice when the subject of the verb performs the action named.
Active voice is used in a clause whose subject expresses the main verb's agent. That is, the subject does the verb's designated action. A clause whose agent is marked as grammatical subject is called an active clause. In contrast, a clause in which the subject has the role of patient or theme is named a passive clause, and its verb is expressed in passive voice. Many languages have both an active and a passive voice and this allows for greater flexibility in sentence construction, as either the semantic agent or patient may take the subject syntactic role.
In a clause including an impersonal verb, the verb is active in form, but no agent is specified.
Examples
In the following examples, the active and passive voice are illustrated with pairs of sentences using the same transitive verb.| Language | Active voice | Passive voice |
| Afrikaans | Die hond het die posbode gebyt. | Die posbode is deur die hond gebyt. |
| English | The dog bit the postal carrier. | The postal carrier was bitten by the dog. |
| Dutch | De hond beet de postbezorger. | De postbezorger werd gebeten door de hond. |
| Arabic | عَضّ الكلبُ ساعي البريد. 'ad alkalbu sa'eya albareed | عُضّ ساعي البريد بواسطة الكلب. 'oud sa'eya albareed biwasitat alkalb |
| Finnish | Koira puri postimiestä. | Postimiestä puri koira. |
| French | Le chien a mordu le facteur. | Le facteur a été mordu par le chien. |
| German | Der Hund biss den Postboten. | Der Postbote wurde vom Hund gebissen. |
| Korean | 개가 우편집배원을 물었다. gaega upyeonjibbaewon-eul mul-eossda | 우편집배원은 개에게 물렸다. upyeonjibbaewon-eun gaeege mullyeossda |
| Japanese | 犬がかんだ。 Inu-ga kanda | 犬にかまれた。 Inu-ni kamareta |
| Chinese | 狗咬了邮递员。 Gǒu yǎole yóudìyuán | 邮递员被狗咬了。 Yóudìyuán bèi gǒu yǎole |
| Polish | Pies ugryzł listonosza. | Listonosz został ugryziony przez psa. |
| Spanish | El perro mordió al cartero. | El cartero fue mordido por el perro. |
| Swahili | Mbwa aliuma tarishi. | Tarishi aliumwa na mbwa. |
| Swedish | Hunden bet brevbäraren. | Brevbäraren blev biten av hunden. |