文法Grammar Point
〜く/ 〜になる become: Meaning & Examples
ku ni naru · JLPT N5
〜く/ 〜になる means “become”. It is a JLPT N5 pattern, shown below in the sentences where real Japanese writers use it, with furigana on every word.
〜く/ 〜になる (become) in real sentences
Each one is quoted from a published Japanese text in this library and links to the story it came from. Some use older spellings, or break off where the sentence carried on. They are transcribed exactly as their authors wrote them.
なる means to become. An i-adjective drops い and takes く before it, so 見えない becomes 見えなくなる: she stopped being visible. Watch for 白くなる later in the story, built the same way.
どんぶりを出すと、山本さんのめがねが白くなった。
— from Never a Day Off (N5)
道の先で、見えなくなりました。
— from Wait Here (N5)
そらが、すこし白くなっています。
— from The Room on the Mountain (N5)
森は、だんだんくらくなった。
— from The First Day of Summer (N5)
Appears in 5 of 379 texts in our library.
蔵書The texts
5 texts in the library use 〜く/ 〜になる
Free to read in full. Furigana over every kanji, a dictionary on any word you tap, and an English breakdown of each sentence.
解説Background
Where this 〜く/ 〜になる explanation comes from
〜く/ 〜になる sits at JLPT N5 in the 302-point taxonomy every text in this library is tagged against. Each text is read for the patterns it contains, which is what lets this page list every text that uses 〜く/ 〜になる and pull its example sentences out of them.
The example sentences were not written to demonstrate the rule. They are quoted from published Japanese texts in this library (Never a Day Off and Wait Here among them), and each one links back to the story it came from, so you can read the sentence where it actually happened.
質問Questions
〜く/ 〜になる: questions & answers
What does 〜く/ 〜になる mean?
〜く/ 〜になる means “become”. It is a JLPT N5 pattern, and the example sentences on this page show it doing that job in published Japanese rather than in a constructed example.
What JLPT level is 〜く/ 〜になる?
〜く/ 〜になる is normally introduced around JLPT N5. The texts listed on this page span several levels, because a pattern taught at N5 keeps turning up in writing well above and below it.
How do I get 〜く/ 〜になる to stick?
Read it rather than review it. Meeting 〜く/ 〜になる in 5 different stories attaches it to 5 contexts you remember, where reviewing the rule 5 times attaches it to nothing. Every text listed here is free to read in full.
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