Hello, I am studying Japanese as my third language for some time now and just recently I have encountered a slightly different version of writing a verb.
For example the verb 話します can be apparently also written as 話をします.
At first glance they seem almost identical but then I remember a quote from a professor during my time at university studying Japanese studies: “If there is a difference in form there most definitely is a difference in meaning, however small.”
Could someone please explain what would the difference be in this case?
3 comments
話します is to speak; 話をします is to tell a story, or have a chat.
They’re not different forms of the same verb. It’s 話す (話すbeing a verb) vs 話をする (話 being a noun)
To add on to what u/AmaiRosencrantz said, 話す is the verb form of “to talk or to speak” which is conjugated to 話します as the non-past polite form. To complicate matters, 話 (はなし) is a noun which means story, talk (noun), or chat (noun). As you may know, a noun can be made into a (する) verb by adding をする (with a polite conjugation of をします) to the noun.