Say and tell are both irregular verbs. The past tense of say is said and tell in the past is told. You probably already knew that!

But what are the differences between say and tell? Let’s look at each word individually.

SAY

Say is just verbally uttering words. Everything that comes out of your mouth, you are saying. We use it to express feelings and opinions, and to give information. The focus is on the words.

She’ll be too shy to say what she is thinking and feeling.
He said something terrible in front of his boss and got fired.
Don’t say anything until your lawyer arrives.

We can also use it in questions: What did she say?

A super important thing to remember when using say is that we can’t use an object pronoun or proper noun immediately after it.

How can I say him all the things that are in my heart?  This is WRONG.

This is a very common error with English learners. If you want to mention who is receiving your speech, use ‘to’.

How can I say to him all the things that are in my heart? Always remember ‘to’. 

But with say, we don’t actually need to mention who is receiving our words. The previous example could be:

How can I say all the things that are in my heart?

Other Ways To Use Say

How else do we use say? We use it for reporting direct speech, an exact quote.

She said, “Don’t ignore me!”

Or for indirect speech, we add ‘that’ and then put what the person said into our own words. It’s not an exact quote. So, our previous example might become:

She said that she didn’t want to be ignored.

TELL

Now let’s look at tell. Tell means to provide information to someone.

Now, it’s very useful to remember this definition, because it will help you remember not to put ‘to’ after tell. We already know from the definition that the information is going to someone, so we don’t need to put ‘to’ after tell. We don’t “tell to” someone.

But we do need to say who is receiving the information, so we always need an object pronoun or a proper noun after tell.

When do we use tell? We use it to give orders, advice and instructions.

The boss told us to complete this project on time. – That’s an order.
My sister told me not to move to Spain. – That’s advice.
The nurse will tell you what to do next. – She’s giving you instructions.

Or someone might just be passing on information: They told me that my car had been towed away.

Now, unlike say, we don’t use tell for an exact quote. But we can use it to report indirect speech.

She told her husband to leave and never come back.

Ok, I think that’s everything you need to know. I hope you found it helpful. As always, comments and questions can be left under the video on YouTube.

Until next time!