Thread: Russian -> English grammar question

Hello,

I am a native English speaker, and my girlfriend is a native Russian speaker who has learnt English for the last 5 years.

We have recently had a conversation where it became apparent that she did not know the difference between the English words "make" and "do".
For example, she recently said "She likes making all kinds of crazy things", when what she really meant was: "She likes doing all kinds of crazy things".
This can become a little bit hard to understand sometimes.
I would like to ask if anyone can please tell me if the words "make" and "do" have similar meanings when they are translated into Russian?
If so, can anybody help me point out the differences in these verbs, using Russian examples?
I know it's quite a trivial question, but I would be very grateful if someone could explain the difference

Thank you very much,
Nathan

P.S I do not speak Russian myself, but I am hoping to learn Russian in the near future. You will no doubt see me on this forum again!

"make" and "do" are represented by one verb in Russian (delat'). However, when English uses "do" or "make" Russian may use a verb other than delat'. In other words, it's pretty complicated.

What she needs to know is that 'make' includes the idea of creating something which wasn't there before, while 'do' is just the performance of an action. If youo make craze things you create items, if you do crazy things you perform actions. So whenever she does not expressly want to convey the idea of creating something she should use 'do'.