Of course they have two different meanings. I never conflated them. From a practical standpoint, though, all three of the sentences that I wrote in bold have the same basic intention.Originally Posted by Dr Unne
The first sentence means "I hope you don't mind my SAYING" (as opposed to my singing or my dancing), and the second means "I hope you don't mind ME saying" (as opposed to Chester saying or George saying). They are strictly different sentences in meaning, not different forms of the same sentence, I hope you would agree. Lots of people use the second form meaning the first form, which is strictly wrong.
It's really just a matter of idiom. For some words we leave out the "that" (e.g. "I think you're crazy.") and for others we don't (e.g. "I hope you don't mind that I'm saying so."). The "that" is grammatically correct and should be present, but of course there's no mandate that every human adhere perfectly to the rules of grammar. There are also, of course, some words for which we use the original way that an indirect statement was constructed (they go back at least as far as Latin), e.g. "I want to live" is the same as "I want that I should live" (not all of them need the subjunctive, though, of course) and "I feel it to be unnecessary" is the same as "I feel that it is unnecessary." This generally sounds a little pompous, but it's not incorrect.Leaving out the "that" is an extremely uncommon usage, at least in the part of 'merica I live in. I've never heard it used.
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