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What is the difference between the two sentences:

Das Buch wurde geschrieben.

Das Buch ist geschrieben.

Hinweis: Die Frage wurde hier auf Deutsch beantwortet.

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    What does your grammar book say? And why are you unsatisfied with its explanation? – Eller Oct 26 '16 at 11:01
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    Here answered in German: http://german.stackexchange.com/questions/27826/welcher-unterschied-besteht-zwischen-ist-und-wurde-gemacht – Iris Oct 26 '16 at 11:42
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    @close voters: The same question was accepted and answered in German. – Iris Oct 26 '16 at 13:25
  • @iris Then it's a duplicate. SE provides means to mark it as such. – PerlDuck Oct 26 '16 at 19:15
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    @PerlDuck, no, it is okay to have questions twice, in German and English. – Iris Oct 27 '16 at 06:33
  • siehe meta: http://meta.german.stackexchange.com/questions/14/if-the-same-question-is-asked-in-german-and-english-is-it-a-duplicate – Iris Oct 27 '16 at 08:12
  • @Iris I wasn't aware of this policy here but when thinking about it it seems reasonable. I actually wanted to mark this Q as a dupe but either I mis-clicked or sth. else went wrong. The moment I hit OK, the Q was put on hold with my name as one of the off-topic voters. I apologize for tipping the scales. – PerlDuck Oct 27 '16 at 19:43

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As explained in answers to this question in German, the case with ist is called Zustandspassiv (stative passive) and I would translate it simply to “The book is written”, which just emphasizes the state, independent of when it was created in the past. The case with wurde is the Handlungspassiv (dynamic passive) and would be translated to “The book was written”, emphasizing the act of writing it.

There is a difference in time, the ist case doesn’t specify a time, the wurde case took place in the past.

There might not be many differences in practice. For example I could say both:

Das Buch wurde von Shakespeare geschrieben.

Das Buch ist von Shakespeare geschrieben.

And both would mean that Shakespeare is the author of the book.

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