Example sentences
gào告sù诉wǒ我yī一shēng声。
Let me know.
bié别gào告sù诉tā他。
Don't tell him.
About this word
告 and 诉 both involve telling someone something, and the pair has become the ordinary verb "to tell". The second syllable is unstressed: gàosu, not gàosù. It wants a person right after it: 告诉我, 他没告诉我. The content usually arrives behind 说 or a clause: 他告诉我说他病了, 老师今天告诉我们要考试. The past marker goes after the verb: 我告诉过他了. For stopping a stranger on the street to ask something, 请问 is the polite opening.
The story behind the character
告
告 is 牛 over 口. Xu Shen's reading: 告, 牛觸人, 角箸橫木, 所以告人也. An ox that gores people gets a bar of wood tied across its horns, and the bar warns everyone who comes near. That was his account of how 告 came to mean to tell. Scholars today read the top of the character differently, but the meaning has been "announce, tell" for three thousand years. 告诉, 广告.
诉
诉 is 言 (speech) with 斥 on the right. The 言 carries the meaning, the 斥 carries the sound. Xu Shen defined it in one word: 诉, 告也, "to tell." That's the 诉 in 告诉, to tell somebody something. Two thousand years on, the character has not budged.