Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell

On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 09:13:04PM +0100, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 11:30:26 -0700, Muke Tever <hotblack@...> wrote:
> > On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:23:46 -0500, Geoff Horswood <geoffhorswood@...> wrote:
> > > What about other natlangs?
> > In Spanish the ordinary words seem to be "hablar" (speak) and "decir"
> > (say, tell).
>
> German also has this two-way division into "sprechen" (speak) and
> "sagen" (say, tell).
Mandarin Chinese seems to divide things up the other way: there's shuo1,
which is both "say" and "speak", and gao4su, which is "tell" - but not
in the sense of "tell a story/joke", which is jiang3.

But note that in English "speak" can also mean "say", as in the wizard
Shazam's famous command to Billy Batson to "Speak my name!"

-Marcos