[...] > I should point out that, in conversational English, you'd almost never hear it > spoken that way by a native speaker. Most often, people would say, > "Believe me when I *tell* you" rather than "Believe me when I *say > to* you", which I can only imagine being used in song lyrics or poetry for the > purpose of phrasing and meter. >
that's a very interesting observation. The first thing I thought of when you wrote "believe me when I tell you" was the Beatles song "Oh Darling", which includes exactly that phrase. I Googled "when I say to you" and in the first 100 results it appears almost exclusively in lyrics, with probably the second most common occurrence being in biblical quotes or otherwise rhetorical styles of speech and writing. It almost never appears in 'natural' English, and where it does I wonder if the writer is a native speaker. So Boris, believe Walt when he says to you... [...] > On 11/3/2010 12:39 AM, Boris Liberman wrote: > > Hi! > > > > Each time I listen to "Russians" by Sting (lyrics here, e.g.: > > http://www.lyricattack.com/s/stinglyrics/russianslyrics.html), what is > > the difference between > > "I'm saying you" smth and > > "I say to you" like Sting sings? > > > > Thanks in advance. > > > > Boris -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
