 Welcome to this video. Today, you're going to learn the difference between say and tell. Two very confusing words, words that I hear students mix up and make mistakes with. But don't worry, this is a really easy fix. And by the end of this video, you're going to know how to use say and tell naturally so you sound more fluent and more advanced in English. Of course, I'm Jennifer from j4isenglish.com and this channel is dedicated to helping you sound like a fluent, confident, natural English speaker. Now, before we go any further, make sure you subscribe and hit that bell notification so you're notified every time I post a new lesson. Now let's dive in with this video. In this lesson, we're talking about the difference between say and tell. So here's what we're going to do. We're actually going to start this right off with a quiz and I'm going to test your knowledge. So you're going to answer five questions and fill in the blank using say or tell. And then after, we'll review the rules and the sentence structure. And then we'll talk about the answers to the quiz. So let's jump in and start with your quiz now. All right, welcome back. So how did you do on that quiz? Let us know in the comments. Was it easy? Was it difficult? You're like, Jennifer, make it harder next time or oh, I'm not sure. Let us know in the comments. So don't worry, we'll get to the quiz a little bit later. But for now, let's review the rules and the difference between say and tell. So let's start with say. We use say with reported speech. So it's summarizing what somebody else said. You can think of this simply when you're quoting someone. You hear this a lot in the media. So let's take a look at an example sentence. The Prime Minister said this summit will take place in June. So you can imagine that this is a quote is reported speech. So at some time, the Prime Minister, he said the summit will take place in June. And now I'm just reporting that the Prime Minister said the summit will take place in June. So the thing you need to keep in mind and the mistake I hear quite a lot is actually with the sentence structure. So what you need to remember to form your sentence is you say something say something to someone. Now here I put the to someone in brackets because generally we don't include that we include it if it's not obvious based on context or if we want to exaggerate it emphasize it but for the most part we don't include it. So just remember you say something. So let's take a look at this next example. My boss said me to stay late. My boss said me to stay late. What do you think? Is this good or not so good? What do you think? Put it in the comments. Well, this is the mistake I hear all the time and let me tell you it sounds terrible because you don't say someone say me say you say her you don't say someone. So just remember you never say someone you always say something to someone. Now when you want to include the someone again remember maybe it's not obvious based on context so it might be like oh what did you say to him what did you say to him so if you wanted to include it what did you say to him because maybe in your conversation you're talking about many other people and you want to specify one so maybe instead of him to make it more obvious you could say what did you say to John because you're talking about all of your co-workers let's say you're talking about five different co-workers but you want to specify one of them in this context you could include the two someone what did you say to John hmm what'd you say to John but for the most part like I said we don't include the someone so it's more common simply to hear my boss said we could leave now let's move on and talk about tell so tell is not reported speech tell is direct speech and what you need to keep in mind is the sentence structure because you tell someone something for example my boss told me to stay late my boss told me to stay late so here you tell someone and that's okay so you have to remember that you never say someone but you tell someone so you're gonna have to take some time to get comfortable with those different sentence structures now a common mistake I hear with tell in this sentence structure is including the preposition to my boss told to me to stay late hmm you don't tell to someone okay we don't want that extra preposition you simply tell someone my boss told me to stay late now we commonly combine say and tell in one conversation so somebody could ask me what did your boss say what did your boss say and then I could reply oh he told me to fix the report now we also use tell with some expressions for example you tell the truth you don't say the truth you tell the truth you tell lies the opposite of the truth you tell jokes and you tell stories so you just have to memorize those four things and remember that you use tell and you don't use say with them all right so now let's review the quiz number one I'm telling you the truth we just talked about that you tell the truth that's an expression of course tell is a verb so we need to conjugate it in our verb tense in this case it's the present continuous I'm telling you the truth now another hint is that you can never say someone so just grammatically you can't you say here because we have the someone you so it wouldn't work if you said I'm saying you the truth because you don't say someone number two what did you say what did you say now here because if you want to use tell you need to include the someone in this case there is no someone so sentence structure tells me tells that we have to use say number three did you tell your boss about it did you tell your boss about it your boss is the someone so based on sentence structure our only option is tell number four my grandmother loves telling stories you tell stories now in this case if I wanted to include the someone I could say my grandmother loves telling me stories my grandmother loves telling us stories my grandmother loves telling her husband stories so you could include the someone if you wanted you don't need to in this case but because it's stories we need to tell number five she said she said she be late this is reported speech right and did you get the verb tense because of course say is a verb so you need to conjugate it this is a completed action so we need our past simple she said she be late all right so now let us know in the comments how many did you get right did you get all five let us know in the comments and also I want you to write your own example sentence one using say and one using tell just to make sure you feel comfortable forming sentences with say and tell if you found this video helpful please hit the like button share it with your friends and of course subscribe now before you go make sure you head on over to my website english.com and download your free speaking guide in this guide I share six tips on how to speak English fluently and confidently and until next time happy studying all right awesome job now you know the difference between say and tell and you feel more confident and you'll sound more fluent and advanced now make sure you subscribe hit that bell notification so you get notified every time I post a video I can't wait to see you in my next video bye