Imagine you want to say something particular to somebody but when you meet him/her you forget to mention the thing right away and you talk about different things for a while until a bit later when you remember it and you say:
Oh I was almost to forget to mention that you got some mail.
I know it is likely to be grammatically wrong, I just wrote down what came to mind.
How do you say it in casual and formal ways?
This is not a case where you forgot to mention it in a previous conversation and this is not a case where you should have mentioned it before. You got the mail after the last time you had seen him/her. My sentence is a kind of conversational thing to say to myself. I don't have to say it aloud.
Best Answer
As others have indicated, you don't want to say:
(For one thing, the was is inappropriate there.) Instead, you'd want to use one of these:
It's interesting how the word almost is optional in this context.
Let's say I meant to tell you that you got some mail. As you're walking out the door, I say:
I almost forgot to mention it – but then I remembered in the nick of time!
Alternatively, I can say:
This means: I had forgot to mention it (until just now). But now I'll mention it.
At least in AmE, I hear and use both of these. People don't seem to get hung up on whether the almost should be included because, with or without it, the sentence can sound correct.