I always get these confused. The second I read as What will you do? or What are you doing? Literally, it could be You are doing what?

The first one though, in my head, I can translate the same way. Though I know it's not the same.

What's the difference?

  • 2
    The first sentence does not seems to be proper Japanese sentence... – Yuki Inoue Dec 7 '16 at 14:50
  • Did you mean to ask about 何か(を)しますか? – Earthliŋ Dec 7 '16 at 17:03

が is a subject marker and を is an object marker.

In the first sentence the subject is 何が. And the object of します is not specified.

On the other hand, in the second sentence the subject is not specified. It may or may not be you, depending on the context. Instead the object of します is clearly indicated by the object marker を.

So, the first sentence literally translates as something like What will do? or it may mean "What is the agent that will do?" It doesn't really make sense as we don't know what the agent is supposed to do. This is absolutely different from What will you do?

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