Why can't ~なってくる be used in this sentence

Japanese
#1

As the title says, why can’t ~なってくる or ~なってきた be used in this sentence.

https://i.imgur.com/rfksQw3.png

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#2

Because it’s asking for the [Polite] version (marked at the very middle top of your screenshot). Also なってくる would be wrong, not just because of the politeness level, but the tense not being in the Present Progressive (I said Past, which is not correct. My bad).

HTH!

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#3

So would ~なってきました work in this sentence?

Also, what does “HTH” mean?

Unrelated to the grammar question, should questions like this be in bunpro section rather than the Japanese section?

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#4

Unrelated to the grammar question, should questions like this be in bunpro section rather than the Japanese section?

Probably depends if you’re raising this as a language question or Bunpro issue.

So would ~なってきました work in this sentence?

The English translation asks you for “is coming to be cleaner”. While English -ing does not 100% correlate with Japanese ている・ています, not using it here doesn’t fit the English translation. Using なってきた would mean something closer to “came to be cleaner”.

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#5

Apologies for my mistake. I said “Past” in my first post when it should’ve been “Present Progressive”. Sorry for the confusion. It’s been fixed now.

When the English is in Preset Progressive, you always want the Japanese to be in ている or ています form. However, the opposite is not always true (when translating from Japanese to English), and it’ll depend on the verb used. For more details on this, check out the following article:

As for HTH, it means Hope This Helps. I guess not a lot of people use such acronyms these days, lol.

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#6

Thanks for all the help, I have a better understanding of the “ing” part now.

I would consider my knowledge of acronyms pretty good but I guess you learn new stuff every day :sweat_smile:

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#7

Just to dog pile on:

なってくる = will come to be

なってきた= has come to be

So the first one can’t be used because it isn’t present tense, and the second cant be used for the same reason

なってきている= is coming to be or is becoming

which is the version that fits the translation of “becoming cleaner.”

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