In search of KOTO NI NATTEIRU

Are you ready for some stream of conscious grammar searching? Alright!

So, just for fun, I put ことになっている into the google image search to see if anything interesting would come up. This, was that something interesting:

My favorite is the Potemkin-like catcher.

It's a poster for an event long gone (the post was in February of 2011!) which seems to be some sort of live event with the baseball team, The Hiroshima Carp. The blog post had this written at the top:

広島カープの選手たちの顔が、凄いことになっている件

Hiroshima KAAPU no senshu no kao ga, sugoi koto ni natteiru.

But bad news!

This is not the grammar point you were looking for.

Why is this? Well, some would say it lies in context, but the real truth is that lies in specific grammatical forms.

The KOTO NI NATTIERU is a common phrase, and it usually means "it is becoming [this] thing". This makes perfect sense in understanding the phrase JLPT is teaching us, but it does not go backwards to the less complex form.

You see, the grammar point in the JLPT is supposed to translate as "it has been decided upon", with maybe a dash of "expected to". So if you say:

行くことになっている

Iku koto ni nattieru.

It literally translates as "What will be is us going"... well, kind of, in any case. But what it actually translates as is "It's decided we'll go", or something along those lines... Unless this a porno... then it takes on a whole different meaning. Perhaps we'll make that lesson for another day.... maybe... on second thought, probably not.

How the above sentence translates is actually as this:

The Hiroshima Carps' players' faces have become scary/awesome things.

Yeah, that has nothing to do with our phrase, does it? Why? Because the specific form being taught by the JLPT can only use a verb (in dictionary or nai form). So, as you can see, it's not hard to see the difference once you realize there is one.

So my point is is this: BE CAREFUL! Don't get tripped up!

And my secondary point is that I think it is absolutely AMAZING that there is a baseball team named after carp. I mean, if carp is what they love, couldn't they choose something a bit more majestic like Goldfish, or something that can evolve into a Gyrados like a Magikarp?

I've decided that Hiroshima Carps should now be named the Hiroshima Magikarp!

The post that is being referred to above can be found here: http://tabetainjya.com/archives/carp/post_1164/