Esperanto · Chapter 4 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
The passive: -ata, -ita, -ota
The passive participles mirror the active ones, and esti plus a participle is the whole passive voice. Includes the -ata/-ita distinction Esperantists have genuinely argued about for a century.
The short version
-ata, -ita, -ota is the active grid with the n removed
The three passive participles use the same three vowels as everything else, just without the n. Skribata is being written, skribita is written, skribota is still to be written. Compare -anta, the one doing the writing, with -ata, the thing being written: same grid, doer and done-to swapped. Only transitive verbs have them, because nothing can be done to you by a verb like veni.
la perdita libro
de is the doer, per is the tool
A full passive is esti plus a passive participle, and the two prepositions that follow do not overlap. De marks who did it, per marks what it was done with. English uses by for both and leaves you to untangle a sentence like it was signed by the king by candlelight. Esperanto keeps them apart, so there is nothing to untangle. Better still, in most sentences, dodge the passive and write oni skribis la leteron.
La letero estis skribita de mia patrino.
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