I was told

[Sally mills]

Why is 'I am told' On m'a dit - rather than J'etais dit?

[Neil Coffey]

If you think about sentences like these in English:

  Mary read [James] [a book]

  Jane told [Daniel] [a story]

  Jane told [Daniel] [that the bus was late]

  The committee awarded [David] [a large prize] for his work.

  The noise gave [Ben] [a headache]

Note that in each of these sentences there are "two objects" (the items in square brackets). One is the actual thing being told/given/read (a story, words etc), and the other object is the person/recipient of that thing.

Now, in English, you can often make either type of object the subject of the passive. So for example, in principle all of the following are grammatical in English (occasionally to make them sound more convincing you may need additional context such as that in brackets, but in principle both constructions are possible):

1(a)  Ben was given a book.

1(b) A book was given to Ben (but not to Mary).

2(a) David was awarded a prize.

2(b) A prize was awarded to David.

Sometimes it sounds much more natural to make the recipient the subject of the passive:

3(a) David was given a headache by the noise.

3(b) ??A headache was given to David by the noise.

4(a) David was told the truth.

4(b) ??The truth was told to David.

5(a) Mary was told that Jim would be arriving late.

5(b) ?That Jim would be arriving late was told to Mary (but not to Jane).

But nonetheless, the point is that these are all verbs where there is both an 'actual thing done/said etc' and a 'recipient of the action'.

And in such cases, French, unlike English, doesn't allow the recipient (the person being told/given something etc) to be the subject of the passive. (Or, in more syntactic terms, it doesn't allow the indirect object to become the subject of a passive.)

In other words, French allows the (b) patterns above, but not the (a) patterns (with similar restrictions as in English: the (b) patterns like "A headache was given to..." that sound odd in English also generally sound odd in French).

So to say e.g.: "David was told X", "Mary was given X", "John was awarded X", "Ben was read X", "John was reminded that X" etc, you generally need to express the sentence in another way. One common way is to use an active verb with "On...", as here.

[Sally mills]

Thank you Neil

[alan gould]

I just came across this.  Comment and question.  The way I think of "on" is the way "one" is used in English formally to mean "people" -- "one should know better."  so when the French say "On dit que..." it's like "it's said that..."  (by the way, in German, there's an equivalent.  They say Man).  

I was surprised in a French In Action episode when a girl with a boy was asked by her sister what she was doing.  She replied "On parle" meaning "we're talking."  Is "on" often used instead of "we?"  Are there times when you do and don't use it instead of "we?"  

[Neil Coffey]

Yes, in fact, on is the usual way of saying "we" in everyday informal speech.

Nous is the equivalent of "we" in formal usage or writing and so textbooks sometimes over-emphasise its use. But in reality, nous is practically never used in everyday informal speech and it can actually sound a bit "over-formal" to French speakers.

I should say I'm talking about nous strictly as the subject. (So e.g. it is perfectly natural to say avec nous to mean "with us", or when marking a contrast: Nous, on reste là = "We're staying here (but you're not).")