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Why "was born" instead of "did born?"
Dear Angela,
I don't know how much you know about English grammar, or about grammar in general, so forgive me if I say this too simply--but don't hesitate to ask if I need to do a better job of explaining any of this.
The verb, "born" is a past participle in English; that is to say, it's the special form of the verb, "to bear" that is used in passive voice (is born) and in perfect tenses (had born, has born, etc).
You may know that the verb "to bear" in English means to carry, such as a burden. Often we say the mother bears a child. It seems like this should be a way of saying that she's pregnant, but we always use it to say that she had the child. The baby has come out into the world. If we turn that phrase into the passive voice, we would say, "the child was born by the mother."
Of course, if you ask me where I'm from or how old I am, I don't need to say, "my mother bore me in 1963" or "I was born by my mother in Los Angeles, California. We're both from the same planet, so I trust you to know that the person who bore me was my mother. So we just leave that part out and say "I was born."
Your question is very interesting, because it makes clear to me something I may never have thought about: Why is it that in English we have no action verb to describe a baby's action of leaving the womb to enter the world. In my second language of Spanish, for example, they'd say "Nací en Los Angeles." Very much like, I presume, you might say in Dutch.
Thank you for a very interesting question. Please let me know if there's anything else I can help with. I hope you find my comments useful.
Warmest wishes,
Mark Springer
Sacramento, CA, USA
Normal member
Speaking: English, Spanish
Studying: Spanish, Portuguese
Studied: German, Turkish, Mandarin Chinese
Played with: Russian, Hebrew, Latin, Tagalog, French, Sign language.
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Language pair: English; All
This is a reply to message # 44789
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