difference in meaning

They are different.

''I've tried to tell you'' is the present perfect tense. It is used to express action that has been completed with respect to the present. (It is considered a present tense, not a past tense, since the resulting state is in the present.) "I have finished" is an example of the present perfect. The Present Perfect is a compound tense; it is formed by using the present tense of "have" ("have" or "has") and the past participle of a verb. In the above example, the past participle "finished" is the main verb, while "have" is the auxiliary verb.

This construction is one of the hardest points of grammar for people to understand. It is used to refer to a subject's past actions or states while keeping the subject in a present state of reference or in a present state of mind. Think of the words in the construction separately: "have" (or "has") is in the present, and the past participle is in the past. For example, "I have gone to the cinema" implies that the subject has completed a certain action (this is what "gone" relates), but that the subject is, in a sense, "holding" or "possessing" that completed action in the present time (this is what "have" relates). In other words, the subject is in a current state (now), and a past action that the subject has done or a past state that the subject has been in, is being referred to from the current state of the subject, which is the present time. This differs from the simple past tense, i.e., "I went to the cinema", which implies only that an action happened, with the subject having no relationship at all to the present.

"I've been trying to tell you" is the present perfect progressive or continuous The perfect continuous (have been doing), as a special case, implies that the action being described was interrupted at the time in question, and does not clarify whether the action resumed. For example, "John had been playing tennis when Jane called him" suggests that Jane's calling him interrupted his tennis-playing, and leaves open the possibility that what she told him required such urgent action that he forfeited his match and left.

Many thanks, Contrex.

I've lived here for years.

I've been living here for years.

I think the first sentence suggests that it is permanent and the second suggests I will be living here temporarily. Am I right?

My apologies for asking you again when you've already replied to the first pair of questions and I should make my own deduction regarding the second pair.

Many thanks.

Yoong Liat, a recurring problem with your questions is that you ask them about small isolated snippets of English devoid of wider context. Yes, the same answer was intended to apply to both pairs of sentences. According to the grammar books, "I have lived here for years", strictly speaking, suggests a finished, permanent state, i.e. "I am settled here", whereas "I have been living here for years" might suggest a temporary, unfinished or interrupted state, e.g. "I may move to Buenos Aires next month".

However not all native English speakers have read grammar books! (Or if they have they feel free to ignore them.) This is one of the central problems of adopting a prescriptivist, rule-based approach when learning English as it is spoken and written in the real world. Very often in order to establish the "meaning" of a phrase, it is necessary to consider the context in which a word or phrase is embedded.

A native speaker might very well say, "I have been living here for years, and I shall (or will!) carry on living here for ever", or they might say, "I have lived here for years, but when I retire I shall (or I'll) move to Madrid to be near my children."