Level 5 · Lesson 15

我的车被人开走了
My bike got taken

我的自行车被偷了。手机被弟弟弄坏了。书被拿走了。

被 turns the sentence round: the thing comes first, and the verb still needs a result.

听 · Listen

我的自行车
 李明 —  安娜，我的自行车被偷了！ 
Anna, my bike's been stolen!  
 安娜 —  在哪儿？ 
Where?  
 李明 —  在学校前边。我昨天骑车来学校。 
In front of the school. I rode it here yesterday.  
 安娜 —  我的手机上个星期被弟弟弄坏了。 
My phone got broken by my little brother last week.  
 李明 —  弄坏了？修好了吗？ 
Broken? Has it been fixed?  
 安娜 —  修好了。今天你骑我的自行车去，好吗？ 
It has. Ride my bike today, why don't you?  
 李明 —  谢谢你！我不会把车弄坏。 
Thank you! I won't break it.  
 安娜 —  我的车很旧，没有人要偷。 
My bike is so old nobody would want to steal it.  

讲解 · Explanation

我的自行车被偷了。手机被弟弟弄坏了。我的车被人开走了。

被 turns the sentence round. The thing something happened to goes first, then 被, then whoever did it, then the verb — 我的手机被弟弟弄坏了. It is the mirror of 把: there you fronted the object and kept the doer as subject; here you make the object the subject instead. The one rule they share is the important one — the verb cannot stand bare. 弄坏了, 开走了, 拿走了, or at the very least 了 must follow it.

书被拿走了。我的钱被偷了。我的车被人开走了。

You may leave the doer out completely when you do not know who it was, or do not care: 书被拿走了, 我的钱被偷了. If you want to say 'somebody' without naming them, say 被人 — Chinese just uses the word 人 where English needs 'by someone'.

我的车没被人骑走。我的自行车修好了。

被 nearly always reports something you did not want — stolen, broken, taken, driven off. For a welcome event a Chinese speaker just says it straight: 我的自行车修好了, not a 被 sentence. To negate, 没 goes in front of 被, exactly as it goes in front of 把: 我的车没被人骑走.

生词 · Vocabulary

词	Meaning	注 · Note
被	by (passive marker)	the thing affected + 被 + person + verb + result
偷	to steal	自行车被偷了
弄坏	to break something, to ruin it	弄 + the result 坏
骑	to ride (a bike, a horse)	骑自行车去学校
修	to repair, to mend	修好了 xiū hǎo le; 修车

练习 · Practice

我的手机 ______ 了。 My phone got broken by my little brother.

书 ______ 了。 The book has been taken away.

我的自行车 ______ 骑走。 Nobody has ridden my bike off.

我的钱 ______ 偷了。 Fill in one character: my money was stolen.

排一排。 Arrange the words: 'My car was driven off by someone.'

被、偷、弄坏、骑、修 Match each word to its meaning.

用一用 · Use it

我的自行车被偷了。我的手机被弟弟弄坏了，我修好了。我的书被人拿走了。

Tell three small pieces of bad news out loud. Give one with the doer named (被弟弟…), one with the doer left out (被偷了), and one with 被人 for an unknown somebody. Each time, check that a result is sitting behind the verb — 弄坏了, 拿走了, 开走了. Then give the good news the plain way, with no 被 at all: 我的手机修好了！