Language and Social Relations

In Malagasy, a language spoken on the island of Madagascar, there are three styles or “voices” in which to phrase a sentence. Two of these correspond to the active and passive voices in English, but the third is known as the circumstantial voice and has no precise English equivalent. The circumstantial voice shifts the subject of the sentence from the person being addressed to the object that will be used to perform an action. The difference between the three speech forms appears in the various ways to give an order:Active: Manasa ny lamba amin’ny savony or “Wash the clothes with soap.”