作 and 做 (zuo4)

[foolip]

ni3 zai4 zuo4 shen2me ... 作 or 做 (zuo4)? Both seem to be "to do" and googling for the phrases 你在作什么 and 你在做什么 gives 56 million and 128 million hits respectively, which isn't really conclusive.

[Kong Junrui]

I learned it as 你在做什么？ And that zuo4 was the one my IME first guessed. But who knows, maybe using the other zuo4 means something else.

[skylee]

It is 做. People using pinyin input might confuse it with 作 because they have the same pinyin and similar meaning.

[roddy]

I suspect you didn't use "quotes" when googling. If you do that the ratio changes from 1:2 to about 1:30, which is a lot more conclusive.

[ameliasj]

Grammatically, it should be “你在做什么？”, though some of us may nowadays like to type “你在作什么？”since people could understand both sentences.

作&做 are used in different situations.

作为，作息，作曲，作业

做事，做梦，做客，做文章

One more, 做作--affectation

[谁翻乐府凄凉曲]

It seems certain that native speakers would't say“你在作什么”

[adrianlondon]

My textbook (Practical Chinese Reader - the old ones) uses the first character from the subject line (sorry, I'm using a PC without chinese input) and my teacher corrected the book so that the second one is used.

However, work as a noun (gong1 zuo4) uses the first zuo.

[tanhql]

作 is used as (part of) a noun.

做 is used as a verb.

most of the time.

and 做作 is an exception, as 作 itself has no meaning.

if you say 你在做什么？, people will know you're using 做.

if you say 你有作业吗？, people will know you're using 作.

so, when you say 你在做作业吗？, people will not confuse the two zuo4.

and adrianlondon, 工作 can be used as a noun or a verb.

我有工作。

我在工作。

you use 做 in work when you say 我在做工。

[johnmck]

AdrianLondon. My PC does not have character input support so I use the website: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/webime2.php?ime=mand_eng_simp

and cut-and-paste.

John.

[gato]

This online IME works well, too.

http://dict.cn/ime.html

[imron]

and this one's good too: http://www.inputking.com It also has a choice of other input methods besides pinyin.

[holger]

Our chinese teacher told us 作 is usually used in an abstract, non-physical meaning i.e. 作业, 作家, 做文章, 作威作福 etc - whereas 做 is more likely to be used in a material meaning: 做饭, 做工.

But the more i look for examples the more this approach seems to be fallacious.

In our chinese-lession textbook all 做s have been chenged into 作, so maybe the latter one is going to be more commonly used as language evolves.

Interesting seems to me the word 做作 meaning unnatural, stilted, contrived.

[venture160]

In Business, if you are providing a service to someone i.e non material, you can use 作. 贵公司委托我们作.....fill in the blanks..