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I'm learning German now and we studied in class the subject of passive voice. The German language has two forms of passive voice — “Vorgangspassiv” and “Zustandspassiv”.

In order to understand better these two subjects I want to make a parallel with English. Does English have analogues of “Vorgangspassiv” and “Zustandspassiv”? Or in a case of English, there is no separation of passive voice to two different types.

P.S. I ask this question here because I want to get the opinion of those, who are familiar with the grammar of both German and English.

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Although the question is offtopic, I will try to answer it through examples.

Vorgangspassiv

Die Tür wird geschlossen. => The door is being closed.

Die Tür wurde geschlossen. => The door has been / was being closed (if emphasizing the activity of closing) or The door has been closed (if emphasizing the result)

Zustandspassiv

Die Tür ist geschlossen. => The door is closed.

Die Tür war geschlossen. => The door was closed. depending on situation also The door has been closed.

The German grammar constructs of Vorgangs- and Zustandspassiv, thus existing different passive forms with verbs sein and werden, are a result of lacking aspects in German language. Other languages have different solutions for this, for English see here (Wikipedia) and for German see for example here (German.SE).

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