Like "say," the word "speak" refers to thoughts and feelings moving from our more internal spiritual levels to our more external ones -- and ultimately from the Lord, who is in a sense the most internal spiritual level of all. This is generally called "influx" and "perception" in the Writings, meaning they are thoughts and feelings that flow in in a complete way from the Lord, rather than being things we have to think about and figure out. On a number of occasions "speak" and "say" are used together; in these cases "speak" refers more to intellectual instruction in matters of thought and "say" refers more to feelings and affections that flow in directly.

2470. During his lifetime a person is scarcely capable of knowing that he has an interior memory since the interior memory during that time acts almost as one with his exterior memory. In fact the ideas which comprise thought and belong to the interior memory flow into the contents of the exterior memory as their own vessels and are joined together with them there. It is similar to when angels and spirits speak to man; at such times their ideas by means of which they speak to one another flow into the expressions of man's language. Their ideas join themselves to those expressions in such a way that they know no other than that they themselves are speaking in the man's own native tongue, when in fact the ideas are theirs but the expressions into which these flow are the man's. This is a matter I have frequently talked about to spirits.