The sentence in question is this one: お客さんが入ってくると、このベルがなります.
It is translated by Wanikani as: “When customers come in, this bell rings.”
So, for starters, I don’t see a word that indicates ringing? Can なります be used in such a way? As in to say it will … be used? Is this contextual, as in, we know bells ring, so an action will happen to the bell?
I’m learning grammar alongside Wanikani, and am still struggling with て forms. How does 入ってくると mean when they come in? I think the と is throwing me off as I’m a beginner to how that shifts sentences. I’ve used it as an “and” for nouns though I am sure that’s trivializing it a bit. Mostly, I want to know how this indicates “when”.
In this case, なります doesn’t stand for 成ります (“to become”), but rather 鳴ります (“to chirp, to ring”).
Arguably, it’s a bit of a confusing example, because 鳴る tends to use the kanji, so when you see なる, there is good cause to expect it to be 成る.
Many of the kana can represent more than one different particles. In this case, と isn’t the noun conjunction (火と水 - fire and water), but rather the と conditional, which marks a strong causal relationship, similar to the words “if” and “when” (depending on the context).
You can read about it here.
In this case, I’d say this is an example of “と for General Conditions”.
I see now. As I’ve been introducing more kanji into my reading, I’m more confused than ever when I see hiragana-based words and I assume it to be simple words I already know that are typically written with hiragana already. Thanks for the fun fact! That kanji seems to contain the bird radical which is gonna help in memorizing that, that’s for sure.
The more kanji I learn, the harder it becomes to read haha. Sometimes the context sentences include kanji you don’t know, sometimes they include kanji you’ve learned, sometimes they don’t include kanji you’ve learned, sometimes part of the word is in kanji but other parts aren’t. It’s horrifically inconsistent and makes 1. it difficult to distinguish separate words and 2. difficult to look up words (because you don’t know what is actually part of the word). Sometimes when my rikaichamp can’t parse it, I end up pasting a whole bunch of crap into jisho and just deleting parts until it actually finds it.
My point is, I wish every sentence was in full, proper kanji. Use the kanji all the time and just include furigana for unknown kanji (although I’m sure most people use some variation of rikai anyway) and then for example if you’re level 16, all kanji from levels 1-15 should no longer have furigana unless it’s a special reading. It would get everyone used to seeing how frequently kanji appears in “normal” writing, and would make comprehending the different parts of a sentence so much easier lol