In English we use the verbs _to be_ or to _become_ for the passive.
active | passive
I wash your hair | your hair is washed (by me)
he has cleaned the house | the house has been cleaned (by him)
the music excites me | I am excited (by the music)
After the passive, we can always put the construction _by + agent_.
The passive is not a tense. A tense indicates the point in time an event occurred. The passive voice can take all tenses, e.g. the passive simple, passive perfect, passive pluperfect, etc.
Formation of the passive in Dutch
In Dutch, we use the same verbs:
passive voice: 'zijn' and 'worden'
[_Zijn_](#/lesson/Verbs.Ir06) (to be) and [_worden_](#/lesson/Verbs.Ir03) (to become) are irregular verbs.
Just like in English, we use the [past participle](#/lesson/Verbs.Re13) to form the passive.
There is, however, one important difference. Just compare the English and Dutch phrases below.
English | Auxiliary verb | Dutch | Auxiliary verb
My hair _is_ washed | to be | Mijn haar _wordt_ gewassen | worden
My hair _was_ washed | to be | Mijn haar _werd_ gewassen | worden
My hair _has been_ washed | to be | Mijn haar _is_ gewassen | zijn
My hair _had been_ washed | to be | Mijn haar _was_ gewassen | zijn
Note that in English, we use 'is' and 'was' for the simple tense, whereas in Dutch, we use the exact same words for the perfect tense!
In English, we use the same verb for both the simple and the perfect tenses (to be). In the examples above, we used 'to be'. In Dutch, on the other hand, we use two different verbs: _worden_ and _zijn_.
_Worden_ and _zijn_
_Worden_ is used if the event is still going on at this particular moment. In English we would use the simple tense of to be, to become or, sometimes, to get.
_Zijn_ is used when we want to express that an event has already occurred or been done (perfect tense). In English, we would use the perfect tense of 'to be'.