What is the difference between 物事 and 事?


> ・時々ばかな **事** を話す  
>  ・時々ばかな **物事** を話す

I know the correct sentence is the former one, but both 事 and 物事 seem like
"thing(s)". Why is the latter incorrect? What is the difference?




事 means "(a) certain thing(s)" while 物事 means "everything" or "all kinds of
things" instead of just one or two things. That is at least how we native
speakers perceive these words to mean, and accordingly, that is what you will
find in a monolingual dictionary.

ばかな事 is a perfectly normal collocation, but ばかな物事 is collocationally highly
constrained even though it might be labeled as "grammatical" in the sense that
it is in a "normal" adjective + noun structure. Whether one calls it correct
or incorrect, ばかな物事 just sounds very weird to the native ear.

