Making and becoming with なる and する

We have already seen なる in some examples from past lessons. Let's now take a deeper look at how it works.

なる is a verb meaning something like "become" or "ending up being". In addition to just "become", it can be used for all sorts of indirect states, like a team ending up being its members, or a rumor turning out to be true.

海賊王に俺はなる！
I will become the pirate king!

1500円になります
It will be 1500 yen.

に is used as the particle to mark the noun (or thing) that the subject “becomes”. As always, the order of particles can change the emphasis, as we can see in the first example sentence above.

In reality, though, なる actually takes an adverb and not just nouns marked with に. It just happens to be that nouns (and な adjectives) can become adverbial when に is used.

We can confirm this when we try to use なる with い adjectives. To do so, we need to turn them into adverbs like this:

これからもっともっと強くなる。
From this moment on, I will become much much stronger.

Likewise for the negative (ない) forms:

食事が美味しくなくなる
The meal becomes not good

Even verbs can be paired with なる. Verbs in the negative form conjugate like い adjectives, and the same goes for verbs in たい form. Meanwhile, verbs in plain/non-negative form require an extra helper noun like よう which roughly means “in the manner of” (same よう we have already seen in Lesson 42).

たこ焼き食べたくなった。
I became to crave for takoyaki

ここで下がれば本当に道がわからなくなる。
If we go down from here, it will become impossible to find the way.

見えなかったものが見えるようになる。
The stuff that was not visible became visible

It is common for the structure ようになる to have the verb in potential form to mean “become able to do” something.

As a parallel of <adverb> + なる, we will now look at <adverb> + する.

You can consider する to be the "active" version of なる. While <adverb> + なる means "to become <adverb>", <adverb> + する means "to make (something) into <adverb>".

The sentence structure works exactly the same as なる, except we mark the thing that is being "made" with を.

みんなが目を丸くする。
Everyone stared in wonder (lit: "made their eyes a circle")

彼女は笑みを深くする。
She deepened her smile (lit: "made her smile deeper")

美味しいものは人を幸せにする。
Tasty things make people happy (lit: "turn people into happiness")