I was reading NHK Easynews when I came across this sentence.
「タイヤのナットが緩くなっていないかどうか調べるように言っています。」
“They are told to check to see if the nuts on the tires are loose.”
My question: if I change the word into 緩くかどうか will the meaning change? And I’m still not quite clear on how to use ~なっている
Edit: just realized I miswrote 緩くかどうか instead of 緩いかどうか Lol
4 comments
The なっている part is from なる “to become” — so it’s the nuance of “check if the nuts are loose” vs “check if the nuts are *becoming* loose.”
緩く is from the adjective 緩い — it changes to く because that’s how you connect it to a verb (the なっている part). So if you wanted to do it that way, it would be 緩**い**かどうか. And yes, you can totally do that. A more literal translation of the original sentence is “check to see whether the nuts aren’t becoming loose” whereas 緩いかどうか version would be “check to see if the nuts are loose.”
It seems a bit counterintuitive if you’re thinking about it from the perspective of English, but the なっていないかどうか sentence construction is actually a bit more natural sounding in Japanese.
緩いかどうか means “loose or not”
緩くなっているかどうか means “becoming loose or not”
なる means “to become” and なっている means “becoming”
– 緩くかどうか – ungrammatical
– 緩いかどうか – “if it’s loose”
– 緩くなるかどうか – “if it gets loose”
– 緩くなっているかどうか – “if it’s gotten loose”
– 緩くなっていないかどうか – “if it’s not gotten loose”
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but the fact that なっている is in the negative in this sentence 緩くなっていないかどうか gives the nuance that they suspect that the nuts are loose. 緩くなっているかどうか, the same sentence but in the normal form, does not convey that nuance.