| 17.1 Verbs of changes - an introduction |
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.
| german | french | english |
| Er wird verrückt | Il devient fou | He turns crazy. |
| Er wird Arzt | Il devient médecin | He becomes a doctor. |
| Er wird nervös | Il devient nerveux | He gets nervous. |
| Ein Mann kann eine Frau werden. | Un homme peut devenir une femme. | A man can turn into a woman. |
| italian | spanish | |
| Lui diventa pazzo | Se vuelve loco | |
| Lui diventa médico | Se hace medico | |
| Lui diventa nervioso | Se pone nervioso | |
| Un uomo púo diventare una donna. | 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.
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