~くなる ~ている ~ていた - Missunderstanding

Bunpro
#1

Hey, so I was just doing new N5 grammar and came across になる and くなる. In the explanation it says that you can use the progressive form to show that something is becoming “x”. explanation

But then right after it shows this sentence as an example:

kunaru

Shouldnt that translate to “The tea is getting (becoming) cold”? I am still struggling with the whole ている thing so I thought I would ask. With my current understanding “The tea got cold” should be “お茶が冷たくなっていました” because the action is completed but ongoing?

I am really confused. Please help :dizzy_face:

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#2

Just added an extra bit of an explanation about this example sentence to the grammar description itself!
Basically, the tea has gotten cold and ‘continues’ to be cold. This is one of the uses of ている.

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#3

This is something I am struggling to this day. Some time ago I had the same question about the following sentence:
ピアノが落ている
Turns out the piano is not falling, but has already fallen. The ている expresses it’s current state, not the action. The same is happening with your tea, the state of it already being cold is expressed in English by past tense, but in Japanese by ている. If you used ていた here, you would express the idea of the piano being fallen in the past and the tea being cold in the past. So something like “the piano had fallen”, etc. If you wanted to express the idea of it falling, or becoming cold, you probably would have to use ていく or てくる, at least that would be my best guess.

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#4

In some sentences, it can be difficult to tell what ている is doing, and honestly sometimes it is not 100% clear unless there is more context. The way I like to think of it is that for things that have a far longer ‘finish’ point than their ‘ongoing point’, the meaning is probably ‘has (X) and continues to (X)’.

With the piano example, it is very unlikely for someone to actually see the piano physically falling, and then have enough time to be able to shout out ピアノが落ちているよ before it has actually fallen. In this case, it would be more likely to be that it has already fallen and remains in a fallen state.

For the tea, the same rule applies. You can’t really sense something becoming cold at such a quick speed that the ている would mean ongoing, so the speaker is just noticing that it has already become cold and remains that way, rather than feeling the tea go from warm to cold in their mouth.

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#5

Thank you so much @Sumerechny and @Asher ! I guess I have to take another look at the ~ている grammar point. Allthough after your comment I checked the (N4) grammar point for ていた and that made things a bit clearer. I feel like it would be very useful to teach ている and ていた together, but I guess the JLPT groupings are just weird sometimes.
Anyways, thank you again for your answers!

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#6

I personally think this sentence is misleading, especially if you are N5 level, as the English sentence (without context) means the tea went from hot to room temperature or even just lukewarm whereas the Japanese means the tea became actually cold, probably below room temperature. The verb 冷める is normally used in Japanese in the context of cooling from hot to room temperature(and 冷える for some original temperature to something relatively cold - so something being cooled in a fridge etc). Obviously the example sentence can exist in some context but I think it is probably misleading for an N5 level learner with no other context other than the English translation.

Maybe there is a rationale that I am missing or I am mistaken though. I guess “N5 vocab” has to be used in the example sentences which probably limits things.

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#7

I rationalized the concept of 'Verb’ている as some sort of switch (the verb stem, which you attach ている) that was activated at some point in the past and changed the state of something. Like entering in a new mode.

For example in the past example: ピアノが落ている, the subject ピアノ is in the ‘fall mode’. At some point in the past started the process of ‘to fall’ and continues to be in that mode.

But probably the best way to understand it is observe differents examples.

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#8

I didn’t mean the rationale behind the grammar; I meant the word choice. The most common context for tea “going cold” is a hot cup of tea becoming room temperature but the Japanese sentence doesn’t mean that.

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#9

You’re completely right about the difference between 冷める and 冷える in terms of temperature, but it also has a lot to do with expected starting point. The same applies for 冷たい. In this sentence, either 冷めている or 冷たくなっている would be perfectly natural. Both with the same translation, albeit a slightly different nuance.

お茶が冷めている。 (Really anyone could say this after some time has passed, doesn’t matter if they have even felt the tea or not)
お茶が冷たくなっている。 (Ideally only the drinker would say this, and it would just mean that it is colder than they expected, even if it is still lukewarm in reality)

Adjective choice will always be based on the speaker’s subjective opinion, just like English.

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#10

So I was told it was unnatural, although obviously still understandable in context, as for drinks 冷たい is used for chilled drinks and in general it is used in contexts when something feels relatively quite cold. It is actually one of the few times that I was corrected by a native speaker without asking so it stands out in my memory fairly clearly. Your explanation is pretty much what I would think if I had never had that conversation and the amount of times native speakers give conflicting opinions on these sorts of grey area issues is massive so I can also believe I was under the wrong impression from that one conversation. I guess the nuance of it still leans towards being fairly strong/subjective regardless - like the tea has been sitting out for ages and the person who touched it found it unexpectedly cold. I’ll try and ask around to see how many conflicting opinions I can get on this from native speakers lol

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#11

If I had to guess, I would assume that the phenomenon that you’re experiencing may actually be largely in part to you being a non-native speaker to begin with. I get this all the time as well. For example, if one Japanese person were to ask another Japanese person if something is natural, they will say yes, because they assume the other person has the same level of context/education to understand how something can subtly change in meaning based on scenario.

However, if you get a foreigner to ask a Japanese native speaker the question, the native speaker will assume that there is no way they could have the knowledge to understand something subtle, so will default to the simplest way to interpret it, even if they themselves don’t interpret it that way as a native speaker.

This is not just a Japanese to English problem. It is a type of mental bias that makes us view our conversation partner as ‘not as capable’ as us if they aren’t a native speaker. This is just my personal theory though. It’s a shame really, it can hinder useful conversations sometimes.

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#12

I definitely buy that theory. My personal experience is that people mostly have wildly incorrect ideas about what is easy/hard, important/unimportant, common/uncommon, etc. I tend to actually not ask about nuance and rely on experience for exactly the reasons you mention.

Next time I see my friend who told me 冷たい felt unnatural in that context I’ll ask them about it actually since my Japanese is far better now than it was then so it could be exactly what you’re saying.

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#13

Reviving this for one extra possibility that I didn’t really even think about here until I was doing my evening walk. We have a tendency to think of tea as a hot beverage in western countries. It is entirely possible that the tea being talked about in this sentence is chilled green tea, which is probably far more common than hot tea here. :rofl:

I’m not sure who wrote this sentence initially, but it’s entirely possible that that’s the type of tea they meant. Pic for reference.

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#14

Right, exactly - that’s the original reason I thought the sentence/translation could be misleading since if someone said 冷たいお茶 to me then I would imagine exactly that kind of bottled green tea and I believe that is why my friend found it an unnatural word to use for hot tea that had cooled down but as a Brit if someone says “cold tea” then I imagine hot tea that has cooled down and not bottled tea.

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