HOW TO USE SAY, SPEAK, TALK, and TELL:

TO SAY = to speak words

• Only used to quote or repeat a person's spoken words.

Present tense - SAY
- "What did you say?" --> 뭐라고 하셨죠?
- "Melissa says her season is Autumn"

Past tense - SAID
- "I said that we should go to the movies today." (verbal)
- "We should go home" she said. (written/narrated)


TO SPEAK = the act of talking or using language.
• SPEAK and TALK are interchangeable, EXCEPT when talking about speaking a language.

Present tense - SPEAK
- "I don't speak Korean well" --> 한국말 잘 못해요 ✔
- "I don't talk Korean well" ✖

- I will speak to her tomorrow ✔
- I will talk to her tomorrow ✔

Past tense - SPOKE
• When NOT speaking about language, SPOKE and TALKED are interchangeable.

- "My teacher spoke/talked to me after class"

- "My friend spoke Spanish to his mom" ✔
- "My friend talked Spanish to his mom ✖

TO TELL - To give information to someone. TELL/TOLD is always followed by a person's name or a pronoun!

Present tense - TELL
- "Tell me about your day" --> 니 하루를 말해주세요
- "Did you tell them your secret?"

Past tense - TOLD

- "Jun told me that he's 26 years old"
- "Melissa told Mingi that she's bored."

Let's try to use what we learned today by writing a short paragraph:

- Many polyglots SAY that language learners should practice SPEAKing in their target language, to improve their confidence when TALKing to Natives. I always TELL my Korean friends that I prefer to text in Korean, but recently I started working on my listening and speaking skills!

*I did not include many Korean sentences in my explanation because these four English words DO NOT directly translate into Korean well*

Comment some of your own sentences for practice and I will check them! 🤗