What is the difference between 帮助 and 帮忙？ Can you give example of sentence that can use 帮助 but not 帮忙? and another example that can use 帮忙 but not 帮助? .... thanks :o)Thanks to Perl, learnenglish, hebe, Eudora, Benjamin, bobhoo, echo and Jiaobao for your excellent contributions. Here is my attempt to sumarize: All three (帮, 帮助 and 帮忙) can be used as verbs to mean help, assist or do a favor. Only 帮助 and 帮忙 can be used as nouns, 帮 can not. As a verb 帮助 and 帮 can take an object, 帮忙 can not. 帮助 is preferred in written Chinese. 帮忙 and 帮 are more commonly used in spoken Chinese. And 帮 is most perfered, perhaps due to syntactic simplicty. Some people think there is a differnce in meaning: 帮助 means to assist 帮忙 means to do a favor But some other people disagree with this. 帮忙 has unsual syntax. For example, (hopefully I am translating these correctly.) 帮个忙，好吗？ - How about helping me out? 我帮不上你的忙。 - I can't help you with that. 他帮我一个忙。 - He gave me some help. 你真是帮了我一个大忙! - You were certainly a big help. Is there a name for this type of verbal complement? I know that many verbal complements will take some words in the middle (For example: 来得及, 看不见，睡得觉，etc) but I don't know of any that follow a pattern similar to 帮忙。 From my perspective, as a teacher, I think students should focus on learning 帮. It is possible to express the full range of meaning without using 帮助 or 帮忙. However, since 帮忙 is common in spoken Chinese it is important for the elementary student to become familiar with it. Nice examples of equivelency: 谢谢你的帮助 -- 谢谢你帮忙 (Thanks for your help) 你能帮我吗 -- 你能帮助我吗 (Can you help me?) 我可以帮忙做这件事。 -- 我可以帮助你做这件事。 (I can help you do that.) 我需要你的帮助 -- 我需要你帮忙 (I need your help) Nice example of differences: 我可以帮助你 or 我可以帮你...but nobody says 我可以帮忙你 If anyone has any comment or correction to this summary, please let me know. thanks!