nihongo wo benkyou shitai

日本語：	[verb (base 1/3)] ことになる
English:	It has been decided, it will come about, it will be...

Way back in August, we had a look at ことにする which allowed us to create sentences indicating some action was taken after a decision. The inference then was that the decision was reached voluntarily. Today, we'll look at ことにする which indicates the decision was made by someone else.

As with ことにする, ことになる goes after a verb in base 1 or base 3.

English:	It has been decided that I will work in London from next month.
Jenglish:	[next month][from][in London][work + decided]
日本語：	来月からロンドンに働くことになりました。

English:	Our teacher has decided that everyone will take the exam.
Jenglish:	[teacher][everyone][exam][take + decided]
日本語：	先生はみんなが試験を受けることになります

Well, those are my examples. Let's look at some random samples from a Google search.

インターネットから例文：

日本語：	アルコールと薬を一緒に飲むと大変なことになることがあるみたいです。
Jenglish:	[Alcohol][and][medicine][together][drink][if][serious][decided][there are times when][I hear]
English:	I hear that here are times when it will be serious if you drink alcohol together with medicine.

So, how did I translate this? Well let's start at the end: みたいです. Covered here it carries the meaning of 'it appears to be', or 'I hear'. Before that we have ことがある which we covered here and has the meaning of 'there are times when' when coming after a verb in base 3. Then we have ことになる. At this point we have 3 possibilities:

I hear there are times when it has been decided...
I hear there are times when it will come about...
I hear there are times when it will be...

In order to work out which one was correct, I had to then translate the first bit of the sentence, which was a simple exercise in vocabulary. The only confusion was the second と in the sentence - luckily I remembered that と can be used as a conditional to mean 'if'.


Let's try another:

日本語：	できるだけみんなが幸福になれる方法を考える、という言及リンク文化圏の発想は、リンクなしトラックバックを「アクセス乞食かspam」と切り捨てることになる。
Jenglish:	[as much as possible][everyone][happiness][can become][means][think about][called][reference][links][cultural reference][conceptualisation][links][without][trackback][access begging][spam][discard]
English:	It has been decided to discard links that reference thinking about the means by which everyone can become as happy as possible, conceptualisation of cultural sphere and links without trackback together with "access begging or spam".

Ok, this is my translation after about an hour of thinking about it. There was just too much I didn't understand. Any help on this one will be very welcome.

またね。。。