Chinese-all-day-breakfast/MD/g1-18.md

Word usage: 告訴

告訴 means "to tell". In English, the verb "tell" can mean to tell somebody something, or to tell somebody /to do/ something. The Chinese verb 告訴 can only be applied to the first of these patterns.

e.g. 她告訴我她的工作。
    She told me her work.
我告訴媽媽你是我的好朋友。
    I'll tell mother you are a good friend of mine.
but not 我告訴他給我寫信。
    I told him to write to me.

Notice the element following the indirect object (i.e. 我, 媽媽) of 告訴 in the first and second sentences is either a noun, a noun-phrase or a clause, but never a verb-phrase. The last sentence is wrong because it uses the pattern "to tell somebody to do something" and hence uses a verb-phrase for its direct object. In this case, we should use 叫 or 請 in place of 告訴 to make a correct sentence:

我請他給我寫信。
    I asked him to write to me.