Lesson 12 of 12
Grammar Lab 12 — becoming, and making it so
about 9 minutes
After this lesson you can
- Say that something got colder, brighter or more convenient.
- Say that you made something shorter, quieter or cheaper.
Words this lesson teaches
- くらい
- dark, dim
- あかるい
- bright
- すずしい
- pleasantly cool
- ぬるい
- lukewarm — said of coffee that waited too long
- すくない
- few, not much — takes が, never sits before a noun
- べんり
- convenient, handy — a な adjective, so it takes に
What it explains
なる is the verb the weather uses
Most of what a beginner wants to say about change has no agent: it got dark, it got cold, the coffee went lukewarm. English reaches for got or went; Japanese reaches for なる every time. 「くらくなりました」, 「さむくなりました」, 「ぬるくなりました」. It also works on nouns — 「先生になりました」, I became a teacher — where the noun takes に exactly as a な adjective does.
する puts somebody behind it
Swap なる for する and the sentence acquires an agent, even an unnamed one: 「音を 小さくして ください」 — please make the sound smaller, which is how you ask someone to turn it down. This is the pattern behind 「みじかく する」 in N4.19, where Sato shortens her own speaking slot. It is not 〜ようにする, which is about keeping up a policy; this is one act on one thing.
The scene itself is in the app.
Lesson one of this track is free to read in full. From lesson two on, the story, the audio and the review are part of a free account.