Becoming: six verbs for one change in Spanish

English splits this job too, but along a different seam. Ours goes by the result: things that go wrong « go » — you go blind, go mad, go blank; a colour or a sudden shift « turns »; the everyday takes « get »; the slow one takes « grow »; and « become » is the neutral word we keep for writing. Spanish splits by how the change came about — ponersefor the sudden and passingvolversefor the lasting and unwilledhacersefor what you did to yourselfquedarsefor what a loss left behind The two sets cross rather than line up: se quedó ciego and « he went blind » agree by accident, while se hizo médico and « he became a doctor » say the same thing with the effort left out.