Reported Speech
Reported Speech
Reporting what someone else said pulls tenses backward in Spanish the same way it does in English — 'he said he was tired' shifts 'is' back to 'was', and Spanish shifts its own tenses in a parallel way.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Present becomes imperfect when reported in the past
"estoy cansado" → dijo que estaba cansado (he said he was tired) — estoy shifts to estaba
"I'm tired" → he said he was tired — 'am' shifts to 'was'
When you report someone's words using a past-tense reporting verb (dijo que), the original present tense shifts back into the imperfect, mirroring English's own backshift from 'am' to 'was'. This tense-shifting instinct, unusually, transfers almost directly from English into Spanish.
Direct commands become subjunctive in reported speech
"¡ven!" → me dijo que viniera (he told me to come) — the command form disappears entirely, replaced by the imperfect subjunctive
"Come!" → he told me to come — the infinitive replaces the command
A direct command can't survive inside a reported sentence structurally, so Spanish converts it into a decir que + imperfect subjunctive clause — the exact same que-plus-subjunctive pattern from your wishes-and-doubts lessons, since a reported command is really just reported wanting-someone-to-do-something. English solves the same problem differently, converting the command into an infinitive instead.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- he said he was tired
- English
- he said he would come
- English
- he told me to come
- English
- he asked if I knew
- English
- he explained that he had arrived late
- English
- according to him
- English
- he stated that
- English
- he denied having said it
- English
- he asked me to wait
- English
- he mentioned that he liked it