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Today it crossed my mind how could I translate this, and some confusion arose
with the verbal forms to use.

If I wanted to say "I got cold", I would say

> 寒くなった

However, for "I'm getting cold", I would use

> 寒くなっています

That left me wondering what would 寒くなる mean, as I would also translate this
has "I'm getting cold".

Is there no difference between these in English? If not, what would be the
difference in their meaning?

Side note: I omitted the わたし bit in the sentences before since I'm only
interested in the conjugations.
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2019-02-21T08:46:39.980
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2020-07-07T21:11:25.667
2020-07-07T21:11:25.667
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question
nuances verbs conjugations
Meaning of 寒くなる vs. 寒くなっています
寒くなっている Is what is happening right now. So you're becoming cold right now.
寒くなる would be to become cold. Or you will become cold.

That being said, Japanese people don't really add the なる at the end when
expressing this. When they're cold they just say 寒いよ
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2019-02-21T08:59:55.367
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2019-02-21T08:59:55.367
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Actually, because なる is a change of state verb,「寒くなっています」does _not_ mean "it
is getting cold", but rather "it is cold"- or more specifically, that it got
cold and remains in that state.

Any verb that signifies a change in state used with ～ている means that the change
happened in the past and _remains in that state_. That is why, for example,
「死んでいる」 means "is dead", not "is dying".

To properly say that it is _getting_ cold, I would use the -てくる pattern. Thus,
my translation would be:

> 寒くなってきた  
>  It's getting cold.

You can use -てくる with a change in state verb (なる in this case) to show that
something has been gradually changing until now. A more in-depth explanation
on this can be found [here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/676/9749).
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2019-02-22T06:58:06.007
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2019-02-22T06:58:06.007
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answer
寒くなる literally translated is "to become cold". It can be used to signify
future tense:

寒くなるだろう - "It will probably get cold"

and can be used in conjunction with such words as くらい and ほど to signify that
something is so x that it will become cold:

雲が寒くなるほど多いですね。- "there are so many clouds that it could become cold"
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2019-02-22T08:28:52.200
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2019-02-22T08:28:52.200
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answer