"Das Wort wurde geschrieben."
Translation:The word was written.
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This is a passive sentence, so the subject of the sentence (das Wort) is not the agent doing the action (words can't write themselves, something else, unmentioned, does the writing). The German passive sentence construction uses werden + partizip II (ie, Perfekt), with werden (conjugated to match subject and case, of course) meaning 'to become' or 'became' depending on tense.
So: Das Wort=the word / wurde = (simple past 3rd person) became / geschrieben = written.
But in English, we wouldn't normally use the construction with 'became', so we simply say 'was written' instead.
If you want to add the agent to the passive sentence, just use 'von'.
Eg, in present tense: Active: Tinxies cooks the dinner. = Tinxies kocht das Abendessen. Passive: The dinner is being cooked (by Tinxies). = Das Abendessen wird (von Tinxies) gekocht.
1206
Bonus! If you want to mention the means of which something is done, use 'durch.'
Eg: Das Wort wird durch einen Bleistift geschrieben. (The word is written with a pencil.)
Using Werden (to become) as the auxiliary verb makes a lot of sense when constructing the passive mood - the literal translation of the sentence is "The word became written". There is no "agent" doing the writing, it just happened by magic. Of course in English the literal translation sounds odd and we say "The word was written", still with no indication of who did it.
Grammatically one could say that in a passive construction, the direct object (receiver of the action) is treated as the subject because the doer of the action, which would ordinarily be the subject, is missing from the sentence.
3112
Count me in: I have a cough, cold, sore throat and a fever - and this is what that wretched owl throws at me.
Das Wort war geschrieben means something like "The word exists. At first, it was a written word, with a pen for example. But since then, the nature of the word has changed. It is no longer a written word, but perhaps a typed word, for example". So, altogether a very obscure meaning unlikely to be used.
Most of the comments here are more than a year ols . So I don't know how useful my comment is going to be... But for others, here are the couple of links that explain the concepts very well. Please take a look at them.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/Passive/Passiv.html
https://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/Grammatik/Passiv/passiv.html
I agree that this should be accepted. German does not make the same distinction between simple past and present perfect that English makes. For example. "Da war ich noch nie" Would be translated as "I've never been there." German uses Präteritum and Perfekt but in practical usage, the difference is more in style than in tense.
2530
Are "The word was written" and "The word has been written" not both translated as "Das Wort wurde geschrieben"?