A traditional way to become

A little lexical musing for you today!

We have a perfectly good word for “to become”, which is iĝi. We can use it by itself, or use it as a suffix (as it was originally intended):

ŝi iĝis pala
she became pale

ŝi paliĝis
she became pale

But, according to the PMEG, a more traditional word for “to become” is fariĝi. Though apparently the use of iĝi is on the rise. I’m glad to hear this, because of how neat the smaller word is, and because I couldn’t figure out how fariĝi could actually mean “become” when it has the word for “become” in it already!!!

Firstly, I’m gonna suggest a reason why fariĝi is more traditional, and why iĝi seems to be taking over. For this, just assume that it makes perfect sense for fariĝi to mean “to become”, then once I’m done, I’ll suggest a reason why I now think it kinda makes sense that it does.

In my previous post, I linked you to an article by Claude Piron on the evolution of Esperanto. In that article he reveals that it wasn’t always the done thing to use affixes as words in their own right; they were always attached to proper roots. But nowadays, affixes are proper words too! We can say endi “to be necessary” (from the suffix -end), or emi “to have a tendency to” (from the suffix -em)!

Given that affixes couldn’t be used alone, and iĝi is one of the most important affixes, it couldn’t have been used alone!

So an alternative was needed, a word to attach it to, which’d maintain the “become” meaning. So that’s my guess as to why fariĝi is more traditional! But now affixes can be used alone, so this is far more convenient!

So why the specific word fariĝi?

fermi
to close

fermiĝi
to become closed, to be(come) closing

fari
to do, to make

fariĝi
“to become doing”? “to become making”? “to become made”?

For some reason, my brain couldn’t think of anything else for a while. But here’s what I think now:

See this sentence:

la doloro faros lin viro
pain will make him a man

Look how doloro is the subject; it is doing the making.
See how lin is the direct object; he’s the one being made into something.
Viro is a complement, it shows the result of the action.

When you put -iĝ on the end of a verb, the old direct object becomes the new subject, and we no longer care about the original subject (the reverse to suffix -ig, which adds an object); it disappears. I may blog about this in more detail, but here’s what I mean:

ŝi farbis la domon blua
she painted the house blue

la domo farbiĝis blua
the house was painted (lit. became painted) blue

Blua is our complement here; it’s the result of the action in both cases.

But notice how the original subject (ŝi) is overwritten with the object (domo) using our suffix. In the second sentence, domo is the new subject of the new verb (in evil speak: -iĝ makes a transitive verb which takes a single object, into an intransitive verb). Read this section of Being Colloquial in Esperanto if you’re crazy interested and can’t wait for me to post more about it.

Back to fari:

la doloro faros lin viro
pain will make him a man

Which with -iĝ becomes:

li fariĝos viro
he will be made (lit. become made) a man

The old object (lin) overwrote the old subject (doloro), which we now don’t care about, and we’re left with the complement.

Notice how “X is made Y” means “X becomes Y”!!!

he is made a man = he becomes a man

So this is why I think I now see why fariĝi pretty much equals “to become”. Still, I much prefer iĝi! 

I had some real trouble explaining this, so if you need clarification, don’t hesitate to ask!