expression

Question

if I want to thank somebody and invite him to have breakfast/lunch/dinner and I pay the bill, how to express this situation to himbkground Non-English speaker

Clive · Accepted Answer

if I want to thank somebody eg "Thank you very much".

and invite him to have breakfast/lunch/dinner and I pay the bill, how to express this situation to him
eg I'm very grateful. I'd like to take you to lunch.
This strongly implies that you will pay. If you want to be very explicit, you can add the expression, It's my treat!.

Clive

Rainspeaker · Answer

This is somewhat a matter of personal style and intention, but here are some things I might say:

"I really appreciated all your help with [whatever they did for you]. Let me take you out to dinner. My treat." This can be used when speaking to pretty much anyone.
"Hey, thanks for all your hard work. I'd like to treat you to lunch." This one is usually OK, except that "treat" in this context might suggest that you think that the person you're talking to couldn't necessarily pay for lunch at a restaurant without your help. This is probably a good one to use if both of you are somewhat poor, and both of you know this -- or generally if you both have the same amount of money.
"You've really been amazing through all of this. Let me buy you breakfast." This one can be used in pretty much any context also.
Or, without an explicit thanks: "Hey, let's grab lunch. On me." This one is casual and good for a friend.
Or, likewise: "Wow, I'm starving. Let's go to [name of restaurant]. I'm buying." This one is also good for a friend.

"Take you out" is a fixed phrase. If you offer to "take someone out", it's usually assumed that you will pay for their meal, but not necessarily. "My treat" makes this explicit.
The sentence "My treat." is a shorthand way of saying "It's my treat." This means "This [probably a meal] will be my treat," where "my treat" means "a thing that I will buy for you, especially a meal or other consumable thing." The sentence "On me" has a similar dropped subject and verb, and "On X" means the same thing as "at X's expense."
"To treat someone" means to pay for a 'treat', a pleasurable, finite-in-time/consumable experience, for that person to enjoy. You can treat someone, for example, to a meal, a day at a spa, or a night at the theater.
"Let me buy you breakfast" is the most explicit form here, but it's phrased as a request: "I really want to buy you breakfast, please let me." This is probably used to overcome the polite refusal that usually follows an offer to pay for someone else's purchases.
"I'm buying" is another way of overcoming that polite refusal; it suggests that there's no possible discussion, that it is simply a fact that the speaker will be the person paying for the meal. Here "buying" doesn't refer to the selection of the thing to buy, but to the payment.

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