Hi Mojave, Let me try my very first answer in italki. :) >그게 말이 되나요? Does that make sense? >말이 되는 것 같아요? Does it possibly (or likely) make sense? It’s actually “does it sound like it make sense?” but do we use this expression in English? >말이 되나요? Make sense? >그 것은 뜻이 있나요? Does it have a (or any) meaning? >그 게 뜻은 있나요? Does it have a meaning? As you see, there is difference between “does it have a meaning?” and “does it make sense?” - pretty much the same difference in those Korean sentences. * 되다 As you know, “되다” is “become” but conceptually its coverage is quite similar to “make”. 1+1은 2가 된다 / 1+1 makes 2 1+1 은2 다 / 1+1 is 2 “된다” is focusing on the activity that one thing is transformed into the other like “make”. I have 4. Another 4 makes 8. 난 4가지고 있다. 4 더 있으면 8이 된다. * 말 Not only that abstract nouns have conceptual meanings, but material nouns are also stored in our brains as concept. As littlething mentions, 말 is literally anything that we speak and we understand – simple definition makes the range quite wide. Does it make 말? / 말이 되나요? that makes 말 / 말이 된다. Are you speaking 말? / 너 지금 말이라고 하는 거야? “너 지금 말하는 거야?” could also be that way but could be ambiguous as well . it could be actually “speaking 말(a language).“ Is that 말? / 그게 말이야? – let’s replace 말 with something simular in English. For instance, language. Even though language is a bit narrow and a bit physical compared to “sense” (or maybe it’s covering some other area), people would catch the meaning. Does it make more 말? 이게 더 말이 되나요? 말 is perfectly matching to the meaning of sense. Because its definition is so simple and it covers everything. Koreans are trained to associate 말 with anything that make sense in the wide coverage. Thanks.