What's new

になる VS だ in です帰宅は日曜または月曜になる

Davide92

後輩
8 May 2017
96
4
23
Hello, I'm asking for your help again about a sentence from goo辞書 (英和・和英):

帰宅は日曜または月曜になる - "I'll come home on Sunday or Monday."

What kind of になる usage is this? How would 帰宅は日曜または月曜だ be different?

Thanks.

Edit: maybe になる suggests that the choice of the day will depend on how the situation develops, while だ is more generic / suggests that the day has already been fixed by someone else, only the speaker hasn't been told yet ?
 
Last edited:
Even when the day is already decided, and it's just only one, ~になる is valid (e.g. 帰宅は月曜になることが決まっている). ~になる shows a result of something, so it has a nuance that the speaker will return on the day after the work or something is done, just like "as a result".
 
Thank you Toritoribe-san. So if I understand correctly, a sentence like クリスマスは12月25日になる wouldn't make sense, because the date of Christmas is just fixed and is never the result of something else, right?

I suppose an exception could be someone doing historical research to find out why December 25th was chosen, who could say クリスマスが12月25日になりました。Am I on the right track?
 
You're thinking about this a bit too stringently. In actual everyday usage, 〜になる is often used for very simple presentations without any significant nuance of "it became."

cf. 生ビールと枝豆になります as spoken by a waiter who is just bringing you the food and drinks you ordered.
 
Thank you bentenmusume-san. Your example has バイト敬語 though, doesn't it? So it seems to me that the situation is slightly different here. I understand that I probably sound very nitpicky. It seems that some of my questions are about aspects of the language that just take a lot of exposure to get a sense of, is this one of those questions?
 
Your understandings are correct. だ is not always interchangeable with になる. For instance, 私の誕生日は11月20日になります sounds odd since the date of one's birthday is fixed just like your Christmas example. 合計で〇〇円になります is indeed used as 合計で〇〇円です by convenience store cashiers, but this is valid because there is a specific context "as a result" behind this expression, too. (And クリスマスが12月25日になりました can be valid in the context you wrote. You got it correctly.(y))

Some people don't like these バイト敬語 or ファミ・コン敬語(ファミリーレストラン・コンビニエンスストア敬語) such like ご注文を繰り返させていただきます or 以上でよろしかったでしょうか. This phenomenon is called 敬語のインフレーション.
 
Back
Top Bottom