What about 'said', as in, "It was often said that he said it aloud"?

What about 'said', as in, "It was often said that he said it aloud"?

No, was said is the passive formation in English.

Maybe this comes close?

I bleed to know he is ill.
He bleeds the patient to cure his illness.

Both are active forms , but in the first sentence the subject is in a state of passive 'bleeding'.
In the second sentence the subject is a state of action.

You know, Bran, I've been wondering whether you mean transitive and intransitive verbs, as in your "bleed" example?

Yes Anna, I saw it too when I looked after I'd posted. First sentence
gives the transitive meaning and the second the intransitive.
English is such an efficient and logic language. Dutch is full of exceptions.
I'm still stuck with those dutch 'klinkens' because they are both intransitive unless....... no, I'll go nag a dutch neerlandica-friend about this.
I think I'll call it a day. Must have been all this glitter the week started with. Blinding! Blinging? Thanks!

Well, it's kind of complicated, but basically voice (active, middle, passive, reflexive, pseudo-reflexive, etc.) and valency (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive, ambitranstive, etc.) are related. In nominative-accusative languages, the passive form is used to make the patient of an action into the grammatical subject of a transitive verb. (In ergative languages, there is a related form called the antipassive.) Intransitive verbs don't have passive forms. Ambitransitive verbs are those which can be used as either a transitive or intransitive verb without changing form: e.g., read, break, understand. In Romance languages, ambitransitive verbs don't tend to exist. Rather, they are replaced with pseudo-reflexive verb forms, e.g., Spanish romperse 'to break', olivdarse 'to forget', hacerse 'to become, be made', etc. In English, "I broke a bone", and, "I forgot where I parked my car", though I am the grammatical subject, we tend not to think of me as the agent. I am not actively doing these things. The Spanish forms capture this in a kind of reflexive verb form: "the bone broke itself to me", "my car forgot itself to me". Real reflexives, like "I wash myself" are different in that I am both the subject/agent and object/patient.

There are also some intransitive verbs called unergative verbs which are intransitive, yet in some languages, such as Dutch, they can be passivized: "Er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd" meaning "A telephone call by Jan has been received". The flip side of these verbs are unaccusative verbs, i.e., intransitives where the grammatical subject is not perceived as the agent, e.g., English die, fall, arrive, etc. In some Germanic and Romance languages, the perfect tenses of these verbs use a form of to be with the past (passive) participle, while unergative verbs use forms of to have: e.g., "Jan heeft getelefoneerd" ("Jan has telephoned"), "Klaas is gearriveerd" ("Klaas has arrived"), but "er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd" ("there is by Jan telephoned"), *"er wordt door Klaas gearriveerd" ("there is by Klaas arrived").

You can find many of these terms at the Lexicon of Linguistics (at the University of Utrecht) or in Wikipedia.

Yes!!!!! That is what I meant: ambitransitive verbs! And read, break , understand are perfectly fitting the idea.

I love your eleborate explanations and the comparisons with the other languages. Specially the spanish solution: Blame it on the the bone and blame on the the car!
And the dutch part is fine but for a little detail.
Basically:"A telephone call by Jan has been received" would be translated as: "Er is een telefoontje van Jan ontvangen (or binnengekomen) "
"Er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd" would be translated as: "Jan is making a telephone call" This dutch sentence tells no more than that Jan is in the act of making that call.

The second exemples you give about dutch are very accurately correct.
I reall love this kind of stuff.
This amateur (not fanatic)is very grateful for this expert's, yes, complicated but very interesting explanations

Basically:"A telephone call by Jan has been received" would be translated as: "Er is een telefoontje van Jan ontvangen (or binnengekomen)" "Er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd" would be translated as: "Jan is making a telephone call" This dutch sentence tells no more than that Jan is in the act of making that call.

Thanks for the feedback and the correction. And welcome aboard, BranShea. (Perhaps, AnnaStrophic would add some Portuguese examples of pseudo-reflexives.)