诉说
sùshuō · HSK 7
tell
🗣️ 诉 (tell) + 说 (speak) = pour out a story; both carry the 讠 speech radical
Two speaking words doubled up: 诉 means to relate or appeal, 说 means to say. Stacked together they mean recounting something at length, the way you relate events to someone. The 讠 radical on the left of each marks them both as acts of the mouth.
说 — speech radical 讠(言) + 兑
说 combines the speech radical 讠(言, 'words') with 兑, which acts as the phonetic component. The character originally meant 'to explain' or 'to speak,' and broadened to mean 'say' or 'talk.' The same graph is also read 'yuè' meaning 'pleased,' a sense later written 悦.