This area of verbs of changes is quite a complex one.
Other European languages use one verb to express the
change of an object or a subject. Neither English nor
Spanish is one of those. Mostly those verbs are translated
with get, become, turn.
English
French
Italian
Spanish
He turns
crazy.
He becomes
a doctor.
He gets
nervous.
A man can turn
into a woman.
Il devient
fou
Il devient
medecin
Il devient
nerveux
Un homme peut devenir
une femme.
Lui diventa
pazzo
Lui diventa
medico
Lui diventa
nervioso
Un uomo púo diventare
una donna.
Se vuelve
loco
Se hace
médico
Se pone
nervioso
Un hombre puede convertirse
en una mujer.
Unfortunately it is hard to get a translation
1:1 and therefore we'll have look at the system in Spanish.
As we see to turn (into) something can be hacerse
or convertirse. The
Spanish language takes here into account how voluntarily
the change happened or whether something happened to
the object without the object wanting or sometimes even
knowing it.
Further we can see that even though
French, Italian and Spanish are in the same family of
languages the, Roman ones, they do not function the same
way.
The following table tries to run all
the verbs of change into a system to ease the answer
to the question which one should be used when.
