You say something. you tell someone something. “tell” is usually accompanied by a personal object. for example: hannah told me she was in love. you keep telling me the same thing every day. we could also use “say” in similar contexts, but it would need to be accompanied by “to” someone. examples:. Say or tell ? english grammar today a reference to written and spoken english grammar and usage cambridge dictionary.
The word ‘say’ is used to state something, specifically opinion, feelings, suggestions and so forth. on the other hand, tell is used to say something to a person, i.e. provide information or narrate something. while say can be used as a noun, verb and interjection, tell can only be used as a verb. when you use the word ‘say’, we needn. Say and tell are irregular reporting verbs. both have fairly the same meaning and are used in reported speech. “say” means: to utter words in order to communicate information, an opinion, or a feeling. example: “i am fed up with this life,” he said. “ tell” means: to communicate something to someone in spoken or written forms. Remember that “say” often focuses more on the actual words that someone says. she’s detail oriented. “tell” is better if you want to focus on the information more than the actual words. that’s why it’s usually much better to use “say” when we’re reporting someone’s direct words. so, we can say:. With 'tell' we need the object (e.g. 'me', 'you', 'her'). with 'say' we can't use the object (e.g. 'me', 'them', 'us'). so we can't say: “john said me that he would be late.” “john told that he would be late.” here are some correct examples: julie said (that) she'd come to the party. i said (that) i was going to bed early.
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