4 TRANSFORMATION VERBS in Spanish

Claudio
Jan 23, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Sep 6

How do you say “Don't BECOME jealous” or “GET happy” in Spanish?

People smiling at the use of "ponerse" and "volverse" in Spanish

This is a nice question 🙂

In Spanish, we use the verb PONERSE in many different ways… In this first case, the meaning of PONERSE is “TO BECOME”:

No te pongas celoso (Negative Imperative here).
Don’t become jealous.

As you can see, the verb here is in it’s reflexive form, so in the PRESENT:

yo ME pongo
tú TE pones
el/ella/usted SE pone
nosotros/as NOS ponemos
vosotros/as OS ponéis
ellos/ellas/ustedes SE ponen

Meaning:

I become, you become…, etc…

For a more comprehensive answer, we can dive into the whole topic of TRANSFORMATION VERBS. Let’s see how all these work in all possible contexts:

1. PONERSE (temporary effect) / VOLVERSE (longer effect) + “ADJECTIVES”

- Cuando te veo, me pongo contento

- When I see you, I become happy

- El cielo se está volviendo gris

- The sky is becoming grey

____

2. HACERSE (ideology and profession)

- Matías se ha hecho budista

- Matías has become buddhist

- Laura se está haciendo siempre más pacifista

- Laura is becoming always more pacifist

____

3. LLEGAR A / LLEGAR A SER (fruit of hard work and perseverance)

- Tú llegarás a ser fluente en español

- You will become fluent in Spanish :)

____

4. CONVERTIRSE / TRANSFORMARSE + EN + “NOUNS” (Radical changes)

- La iglesia se ha convertido en una discoteca

- The church has become a disco

And that’s it! Now you just have to try to use them in your conversations, so you can assimilate them and feel more and more confident speaking Spanish!

Qué tengas un día maravilloso!

Claudio

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