To the question of how to spell the word: “say” or “say”, you can answer that both options have a right to exist, but only if these verbs are in different morphological states.
What is known about the verb?
To begin with, recall what kind of speech it is and what features it has. The verb refers to the significant (independent) parts of speech, denotes an action, attitude, state. "What to do, what to do?" - the questions that are asked to him. The initial form of the verb is called the infinitive, and also the indefinite form. The verb has an inclination, a voice, varies in tenses, gender, numbers, persons. That is why various interpretations arise (including erroneous ones), how to write it correctly in one or another case: “say” or “say”, “knit” or “knit”, “dance” or “dance”, etc.
If it’s about mood ...
If we are talking about the verb plural and second person in the indicative mood (you say), then of course it ends in -et . But if the form of imperative is supposed in the verb of the 2nd person pl. h, then in the word we will write the ending -ite . Then the stress falls on him: say it. Thus, in order not to make mistakes in the word “say” or “say”, it is necessary to determine the mood of the verb.
Verb Face
However, a mistake can sooner be made precisely in the verb of 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 will be 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 2nd L. in the phrase "what do you say." As the ending is written here, the conjugation will tell. Verbs in Russian have only two of them.
First conjugation
Linguists portray it as the Roman numeral I. This group of verbs includes words that end in an indefinite form without ending. These include verbs ending in -et (order), -ut (pull), -at (collect), -wash (swim), -ot (grind), -yat (sow), -t (sew) and others. The token “say” also refers 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”.
Personal endings for verbs I conjugations are distributed as follows:
| Face | Singular | Plural |
| 1 | -u (I will say), -u (stele) | -em (say, stele) |
| 2 | you (say, stele) | -you (say, stele) |
| 3 | -et (say stiletto) | -out (say), -out (stel) |
Second conjugation
It is customary to designate the Roman numeral II. This category includes verb words in the infinitive ending in -it : give, bring down, hurt, and others. In addition to them, 11 verb words ending in -at or -et adjoin the second conjugation group. To make it easier to remember, they rhyme:
drive, hold, watch and see,
breathe and hear hate
and hurt and endure
and depend and twirl.
Personal endings in verbs of the II conjugation look like this:
| Face | Singular | Plural |
| 1 | (breathing), (pray) | -im (breathe, pray) |
| 2 | -you (breathe, pray) | -it (breathe, pray) |
| 3 | -it (breathes, prays) | -at (breathe), -at (pray) |
“Say” or “say” - how to find the right letter?
A simple five-step algorithm helps you figure out which letter to assume in a word about which doubts arise.
- Step One - I translate the verb in indefinite form: say.
- Step two - highlight the suffix and ending: -at.
- Step Three - I find out that this is how the verbs of I conjugation end.
- Fourth step - I find out whether the word refers to exceptions: in this case, no.
- The fifth step - I find in the table that in the form that interests me (singular, 2-nd lexeme) the lexeme ends with something , which means I ’ll write it.
Other cases
The word "hurt" may confuse us. If we decide that the token ends in -it and assign it to the second conjugation, then we risk erring in writing the form of the 3rd l., Pl. h. However, this word belongs to the group of the first conjugation, and the word "bruise" serves as the initial test form for it.
Sometimes we deal with reflexive verbs, then it is necessary to mentally discard the reflexive postfix and otherwise determine the spelling according to the algorithm. For example, how to write a verb in a sentence: "Easy to breathe ... thou after rain"? We will reason like this. We exclude the postfix -sya, we get the word "dis ... t". We translate it into the infinitive: “breathe,” the word ends with -at, should refer to the first conjugation, but is included in the number of exception words, and therefore belongs to the second conjugation. According to the rule, in this form (unit, 3 r.), You should write the letter at the end and : breathes. Therefore, the reflexive verb in the sentence is written as follows: "It is easy to breathe after the rain."
We figured out how to write the verb: “say” or “say” if it is used in speech in the indicative mood, and also examined some other examples. The spelling of the lexemes of this part of speech in cases where there is no stress on the vowel obeys the rule of two verb conjugations.