Whet's the difference between way to tell and way to say? [closed]

Solution 1:

In usage, announce, say, tell, report forms a sequence of synonyms going from most direct to most indirect. When one announces something, the connotation is that the speaker speaks in person. When one reports something, it can be done via documents. There are exceptions, such as sending letters that announce the arrival of a baby, but even that carries the idea of some kind of herald.

The extremes of the sequence tend to be more literal, whereas the semantic range of say and tell includes ideas other than communication, ideas such as ‘knowing’. This is how your example comes across.

Between say and tell, “say” tends to be slightly more direct and literal. “I cannot say which I prefer” can refer to ambivalence, but context can also flip the meaning to “not allowed to mention it”. Switching to tell weights the sense more strongly towards ‘ambivalence’, although “cannot tell you” flips it other way.

The key is to determine whether say/tell is in the active voice or in what’s known as the ‘middle’ voice - are they ‘speaking’ to someone else, or are they ‘speaking’ to themselves?

In your example, both options are middle-voiced, and both mean “don’t know”. If you replace “if” with “whether”, though, it is possible to construe the “say” variant as “not allowed to tell you”.