To the question of how to write the word correctly: "say" or "tell", you can answer that both options have the right to exist, but only if these verbs are in different morphological states.
What is known about the verb?
To begin with, let's remember what this part of speech is and what features it has. The verb refers to significant (independent) parts of speech, denotes an action, attitude, state. "What to do, what to do?" - questions that are asked of him. The initial form of the verb is called the infinitive, and also the indefinite form. The verb has a mood, pledge, changes in tense, gender, numbers, persons. That is why there are various interpretations (including erroneous ones) of how to write it correctly in this or that case: “say” or “say”, “knit” or “knit”, “dance” or “dance”, etc.
If it's inclination…
If we are talking about a plural and second person verb in the indicative mood (you say), then, of course, it ends in -et. But if the form of the imperative mood is assumed in the verb of the 2nd person plural. what inthe word will write the ending -ite. Then the emphasis falls on him: say. Thus, in order not to make a mistake in the word "say" or "say", it is necessary to determine the mood of the verb.
Verb face
However, a mistake is more likely to be made in the verb of the indicative mood, so now we will consider an effective and simple rule that makes it easy to determine the spelling of this verb in this and in other forms (for example, “say” or “say”).
It's about conjugations and personal endings. They are called personal because they express one of the three persons existing in the grammar of the Russian language - 1st, 2nd or 3rd. For example, the verb is used in the form of the 2nd l. in the phrase "what do you say." How the ending is written here, the conjugation will tell. There are only two verbs in Russian.
First conjugation
Linguists depict it with the Roman numeral I. This group of verbs includes words that in an indefinite form end not in -it. This includes verbs ending in -et (command), -ut (pull), -at (collect), -yt (swim), -ot (grind), -yat (sow), -t (sew) and others. The lexeme "say" also belongs to the group of words of the first conjugation. In addition, the category of the first conjugation includes 2 words ending in -it: “lay”, “shave”.
Individual endings for verbs of I conjugation are distributed as follows:
| Face | Singular | Plural |
| 1 | -u (I will say), -u (I will make) | -eat (say stele) |
| 2 | -eat (say, lay) | -et (say, spread) |
| 3 | -et (say, lay) | -ut (say), -yut (lay) |
Second conjugation
It is usually denoted by the Roman numeral II. This category includes verb words that end in -it in the infinitive: give, bring down, injure, and others. In addition to them, 11 verb words ending in -at or -et adjoin the group of the second conjugation. To make it easier to remember, they rhymed:
drive, hold, look and see, breathe and hear, hate, and offend and endure, and depend and twirl.
Personal endings for II conjugation verbs look like this:
| Face | Singular | Plural |
| 1 | -u (breathe), -yu (beg) | -im (breathe, pray) |
| 2 | -shish (breathe, pray) | -ite (breathe, pray) |
| 3 | -it (breathes, prays) | -at (breathe), -yat (beg) |
"Say" or "say" - how to find the right letter?
A simple algorithm in five steps helps to figure out which letter to guess in a word about which there is doubt.
- Step one - I translate the verb into an indefinite form: say.
- Step two - I select the suffix and the ending: -at.
- Step three -I find out that this is how verbs of conjugation I end.
- Step four - find out if the word is an exception: in this case, no.
- Fifth step - I find in the table that in the form of interest to me (singular, 2nd l.) the lexeme ends in -eat, so I write say.
Other occasions
The word "bruise" can confuse us. If we decide that the lexeme ends in -it and attribute it to the second conjugation, then we risk making a mistake in writing the form of the 3rd letter, pl. h. However, this word belongs to the group of the first conjugation, and the word “to hurt” serves as a check initial form for it.
Sometimes we are dealing with reflexive verbs, then it is necessary to mentally discard the reflexive postfix -sya and otherwise determine the spelling according to the algorithm. For example, how to write a verb in a sentence: “breathe easily … after the rain”? We will reason like this. Let's exclude the postfix -sya, we get the word "dish … t". Let's translate it into the infinitive: "to breathe", the word ends in -at, should refer to the first conjugation, but is among the exception words, and therefore belongs to the second conjugation. According to the rule, in this form (singular, 3rd l.) you should write the letter and at the end: breathes. Therefore, we will write the reflexive verb in the sentence like this: “It is easy to breathe after the rain.”
We figured out how to write the verb: "say" or "tell" if it is used in speech in the indicative mood, and also sorted out some other examples. Spelling of lexemes of this part of speech in cases where the vowel does not fallstress, obeys the rule of two verb conjugations.
