I have been learning Japanese basics and beginner vocabulary here and my understanding was that the noun はなし referred to speech and the verb はなす means "to talk." But I have doing some beginner reading and encountered a text that instead of using "はなします" to describe a character speaking, it is using "はなしをする" which until now I haven't encountered. Is there nuance for when the former is used instead of the latter (and vice versa) or are they interchangeable?
話します is kind of just the verb for talking, whereas 話をする is more like literally "doing a talk." There is a little bit of nuance there, but not much from what I know. Ending the one with する also makes it less formal, a more formal equivalent would be 話をします.
I had been wondering too! Just from reading ラノベ, my feeling was that it's a bit like the difference between "talk to" and "speak with", in that 級友と話す would be just the basic statement of talking to a classmate (as in, saying what the speaker is doing, i.e. not reading or staring out the window), while 級友と話をする would be more like "I spoke with them about that thing". But that may be just interpretation.
