Say or tell? Why "he said me" sounds wrong (and what "explain me" has to do with it)

You tell your roommate in Toronto: "My boss said me I can work from home on Fridays." She gets it, but the sentence grates. Later you ask: "Can you explain me how this app works?" Same stumble, different verb.

The rule fits on one line: tell puts the listener right after the verb, and say doesn't. You tell someone something and say something to someone. Oxford: "Say never has a person as the object." In Spanish, the listener rides in a pronoun in front of almost any verb (me dijo, me explicó, me sugirió), and that reflex pushes you toward said me and explain me. With explain, describe, and suggest, the fix matches say: the person goes after, with to, for a different grammatical reason.

"He said me" or "he told me"? Ask who's listening#

According to Cambridge's grammar guide, tell normally takes both the person and the thing being told, while say takes no indirect object and needs to: she said to me, never she said me. CUNY's journalism school sums it up: "You say something to someone, but you tell someone something."

Back to what you told your roommate in Toronto:

Wrong: "My boss said me I can work from home on Fridays."
Right: "My boss told me I can work from home on Fridays."

With no listener, plain say works: "My boss said I can work from home." Instructions follow the same rule: Oxford flags The doctor said me to stay in bed as wrong. Outside a packed restaurant in Chicago, you explain to your friend why you're both still on the sidewalk:

Wrong: "The waiter said us to wait outside."
Right: "The waiter told us to wait outside."

The reverse mistake, tell with no listener to report speech, is on Cambridge's list of typical errors. From the boarding gate, you pass the news on to your mom:

Wrong: "She told that the flight was delayed."
Right: "She said the flight was delayed." or "She told us the flight was delayed."

Standing in front of an empty fridge, to your roommate:

Wrong: "Say me the truth: did you finish my leftovers?"
Right: "Tell me the truth: did you finish my leftovers?"

How often do say and tell show up in real English?#

In the COCA corpus of American English, say appears 4,125.2 times per million words, at rank 26, and tell 1,127.56 times, at rank 92, so say is nearly four times as common. In TV and movie dialogue, say logs 3,248.33 per million and tell 2,464.73, almost neck and neck. In the news, say climbs to 8,029.96 and tell drops to 752.47, roughly ten to one, because every quote ends with he said.

"Explain me," "describe me," "suggest me": same "me," different reason#

Ainara Imaz Agirre notes in her 2015 study that in Spanish the recipient is doubled by a pronoun, as in Pedro le entregó el paquete a Ana. That le is what Spanish nudges you to carry into English.

Explain me fails for a different reason than said me. English allows verb + person + thing (tell me the news, show me the photos, give me a minute) with Germanic verbs and blocks it with Latinate verbs like explain, describe, or suggest: that's Steven Pinker's Latinate constraint, cited by Imaz Agirre. Cambridge's usage note gives the same verdict: Can you explain the route to me?, not Can you explain me the route? A practical shortcut, not a law: if the verb sounds Latin (explicar, describir, sugerir), put to before the person.

First week at an office in Austin, staring at the time-tracking app:

Wrong: "Can you explain me how this app works?"
Right: "Can you explain to me how this app works?" or, shorter, "Can you explain how this app works?"

Suggest and describe work the same way, whether it's a podcast tip or a call about an apartment in Miami:

Wrong: "My friend suggested me a great podcast."
Right: "My friend suggested a great podcast to me."

Wrong: "Could you describe me the apartment before I sign?"
Right: "Could you describe the apartment to me before I sign?"

Imaz Agirre tested the pattern with 90 Spanish-speaking learners of English at three proficiency levels. Intermediate learners accepted impossible sentences like Elizabeth explained Gabriel her new plan. On beginners she's blunt: "Findings revealed that learners at the lowest proficiency level showed full transfer effects from their L1."

Overgeneralizing is a normal stage, even for native children. Charles Yang and Silvina Montrul contrast give the library the book with donate the library the book, and their model predicts "an acquisition stage where the constructions are productive, followed by a stage where learners retreat from overgeneralization."

Always tell me, never say? When not to over-correct#

Tell also means "notice," and then it takes no listener. Oxford lists I could tell (that) he was angry. I could tell she was nervous is perfect English: you're not telling anyone, you're picking up on it.

Tell also means "distinguish": I can't tell the difference means you can't see what sets two things apart. Oxford gives It was hard to tell the difference between the two versions and tell them apart.

Several collocations take tell with no listener: tell the truth, tell a lie, tell a joke, tell a story, never say a lie. Reading a clock is tell the time (UK) or tell time (US).

Say has correct uses too, so leave them alone. Cambridge lists Say hi to Gemma, so Say hi to your mom for me is fine. In informal speech, say + infinitive passes on instructions: he said to leave it till tomorrow. What fails is the person in the middle: said me to.

Could you say this out loud right now, without stopping: "She told me to call you, so explain it to me"? Tabla trains exactly that step: you see the sentence in Spanish, say it in English out loud, and its adaptive review brings it back right before you'd forget it.

Translate without thinking: "Mi jefa me explicó el plan y me dijo que se lo contara al equipo."

"My boss explained the plan to me and told me to tell the team." Explain is Latinate, so the person goes after it with to. Me dijo que + an instruction is told me to, and contárselo al equipo is tell the team, listener right after the verb.

Try this today: record a one-minute voice memo retelling a conversation from today with three told me and one explained to me, then play it back listening for any said me.