Quote Originally Posted by Seraph
One of the reasons for the 'explain me' difficulty, is that 'tell me' is perfectly acceptable. The 'to' needn't be inserted for every instance of verb-indirect object for dative case.???
Not only is "tell me" perfectly acceptably, I would say it is the only possibility. It sounds very odd with a preposition. Mainly because "tell" kind of incorporates the preposition in itself - "she told me the bad news" as opposed to "she told the bad news to me". In the second case, "to" is unnecessary. You may as well say "she said the bad news to me" (which sounds a little strange). Indeed, some languages don't really make a distinction between the two. In German, for instance, "tell" and "say" are often translated by the same word.

"Explain me" you might possibly hear in regional language, but most people will deem it to be a mistake and poor grammar. It's also interesting that, while "she gave me it" is widely accepted as being fine, "she gave it me" is somewhat frowned upon. Indeed, that word order is more of a regionalism.

Ah, the inconsistencies.