Olga
from Latvia asks:
Please
tell me when we must use become and when we must use get.
Margarete
Stepaneke from Austria asks:
I would very much like to know when to use become. My feeling
is that verbs like get, turn, go and grow
are often preferred to become. Is there a rule for when
to use become?
Get,
as we shall see, has many different meanings whereas become basically
indicates development of some kind.
Get
is more informal and is frequently used in speech; become is
more formal and is more often used in writing.
Get/become
+ adjective
When
used with adjectives, get indicates growth or development
and can therefore be used as the preferred alternative to become
in an informal register. Compare the following sentences:
Informal
Formal
I
got interested in photography when I was ten.
I
became interested in art in later life.
As
he got older, his garden got really messy.
As
he became older, he could no longer maintain his garden
It got colder and colder the further north we went.
It
became increasingly cold as we travelled north.
I'm
getting quite hungry now, aren't you?
He
became quite angry when he discovered there was no food
Become
+ noun
We
cannot, however, use get with a noun, even though the meaning
is 'grow' or 'develop into'. We have to use become in this
sense:
'She was only seventeen when she became a beauty queen.'
'Texas became the twenty-eighth state of the USA in
1845.
Get
+ noun/pronoun
When
we use get with a noun or a pronoun as a direct object, get
usually means 'obtain', 'acquire', 'receive' or 'fetch'.
Become
is impossible here:
'I got the highest marks in the class for my essay on
Lord Byron.'
'I got my goldfish from the pet shop down the road.'
'I was getting about fifty emails every day when I was
working on the project.'
'Could you get me a punnet of peaches from the supermarket?'
'Let me get you a drink. What'll you have?'
Get
and go to indicate movement
Get
indicates the end of a journey and can be used informally as
an alternative to 'reach' or 'arrive at'. When we use go,
we are talking about the 'complete journey', usually. Compare the
following:
'I usually go to work by car, but I went to Bristol
by train yesterday.'
'I didn't get home until nearly midnight.'
'Can you tell me how to get to Buckingham Palace?'
Go,
grow and turn toindicate a change of state
Grow
indicates a slow change and sounds literary. It can be replaced
by ‘become’ or ‘get’. Turn indicates a faster change and
can be replaced by ‘go’:
'As they grew richer, they invested more money in shares.'
'My aim is to grow old gracefully and with dignity.'
'He drove away as soon as the lights turned green.'
'The leaves turned brown as the weather got colder.'
There is so
much more to get to know about get, Margarete, but I'll get into
trouble with my editor if I make this reply any longer. It is a
difficult area, but I hope it is slowly becoming clearer.
