Is there any difference between the usage of those two expressions in a conversation?
Thanks in advance.
Learn English – Difference between “Talk to me” and “Tell me”
conversationexpressionssociolinguisticssyntactic-analysis
Related Solutions
They are freely interchangeable in many everyday contexts, but there are differences in the tone of voice. "Meant to" has a more philosophical, fatalistic connotation, while "supposed to" might refer to a transgression or snafu of some sort. For example:
Despite the best efforts of the director, the actors and the rest of the crew, the movie didn't do well- it just wasn't meant to be a blockbuster. Try substituting 'supposed to' here and it sounds way wonky.
Despite the best efforts of the director, the actors and the rest of the crew, the movie didn't do well- it just wasn't supposed to be a blockbuster. Well, what can I say. It was supposed to be a blockbuster; unfortunately, it wasn't meant to become one.
So, my submission is, the context matters. 'Meant to' might be used in situations that can be remedied as well as in situations that can't, while 'supposed to' might be used in a situation that can possibly be reversed.
J.R. mentioned a distinction that applies in some cases and noted that because of the wide range of uses of the two phrases, there might not be a “universal way to differentiate when one should be used instead of the other”.
Another distinction (similar in that it applies in some cases but far from all) is that “Here we go” is frequently inclusive of the speaker, and “There we go” frequently is not. A very few of the examples of “Here we go” and “There we go” found in A Collection of Confusible Phrases
by Yuri Dolgopolov illustrate this:
Another distinction is that “here we go” is found 10 times more commonly (in Google Books English-language corpus) than is “there we go”, and many instances of the latter are irrelevancies like “From there we go to Spain”.
Best Answer
Talk refers to the act of interpersonal communication through speaking. So if you say:
This would imply that the person is not speaking or communicating with you to you ( - otherwise you would not need to say it!).
on the other hand, means tell me the information. With the verb tell, the person you are telling is the indirect object of the verb, and the information the direct object. So if someone just says tell me, it means tell me your information.