Transcription
Hey everybody, Cur Paul here.
In today's video, I'm going to be talking about reported speech in Spanish. Reported speech is when we talk about what someone else told us. And you need this to tell stories, you know, talk about what happened yesterday and to answer that question. What do you say? That kind of thing.
This is a topic I've never done before. Um, the reason I'm doing it now is because I've had a couple members of my private learning group, the Curu Spanish Crew, ask me about reported speech, ask me for a video. Have a lot of interaction with the folks over there. Oh, by the way, if you want to boost your Spanish, might want to join that, put a link to it in the description.
Anyway, um, so I decided to do a video. The reason I haven't done a video before, and as we move through this, I'll be pointing it out, is because when you know English, reported speech in Spanish is not going to be super difficult with the exception of one aspect of it, and that's involving the um imperative and the changing over to the imperfect subjunctive with a tense shift. But for the majority of it, it's not going to be super difficult. You have a huge advantage.
All right, so let's just jump into this thing and uh I'll show you how your English relates and hopefully you can remember things and be able to tell stories later. All right, we need a little coffee.
There are two types of reported speech. There is direct and indirect. Direct speech is a direct quote. Maria said, "I want to go to the beach." Mariah. Indirect speech is when we take what somebody else said and we put it in our own words. In other words, we we paraphrase what they said. Maria said that she wanted to go to the beach. See, that's going to be the most common way we tell stories because we usually just don't go quote to quote. You're not like, "Uh, Maria said, I want to go to the beach." And then I said, "That sounds like a great idea." And then she said, "No, we usually just say, uh, Maria said that she wanted to go to the beach."
So, I'm going to put all of those examples on the screen here so you can see them together, direct indirect, along with the English translations. And I want you to notice that the English and Spanish are very similar. And when I say that, you might be like, well, said doesn't sound like deho, Paul. What are you talking about? I'm talking about the structure of the sentences. And I want you to think of that as we go through this. I'm going to be pointing out those similarities because it's going to help you come up with your sentences.
In Spanish, we have a reporting verb that is said, and yes, that's what those types of verbs are called. Other ones are like to ask to answer to explain. There are a lot of them. To say is the big one. So we'll be playing with that most today. So back to this in the direct they're structured very much the same. We have a reporting verb in the past tense and then we have a quote in the present. They're both in the present. And when we took our quote and put it in indirect speech, we saw a tense shift, right? It changed in English to the past tense. Well, in Spanish, it also changed to the past tense.
One of the challenges um that you may face, you know, as an English speaker learning Spanish is, you know, they have two main forms of the past tense, the predator and the imperfect. So, you may pause for a moment and wonder which one. And I'm going to give you some tips as we go through the video to help you with that. But in this case, it is changing into the imperfect. And that's actually one of the little formulas I'll be showing. you know that if our verb of reporting is in the past tense and our quote is in the present tense when we change it over into the indirect then it's going to become imperfect. So I'm going to be showing you little formulas like that just to give your Spanish a little boost.
Another thing that happens when we um change over to the indirect is our quote was in first person, right? Maria said I want to go to the beach. I the subject. But when we changed over to indirect speech, the subject change of that clause because it's she now, right? She wants to go to the beach. Now, as English speakers, we're doing the exact same thing. So, I don't think we have to spend a lot of time on it. And I also don't think you're going to have any trouble with it. The one thing you may um struggle with a little perhaps are the conjugations because you're maybe you're still learning conjugations in Spanish. So, you just have to make sure that the conjugation matches the subject. That's it. And of course, you know, pronouns may change if in the quote it's like my book and you know, in the indirect quote, it might be her book. So, me, Sue, just little things to think about, but it mirrors English very closely.
So, let's go ahead and talk about tense shifting. And it's not always going to shift. Um, it's going to have a lot to do with what our reporting verb, what tense the reporting verb is in. So, we'll start out with just present tense. Okay? If the reporting verb is in the present tense, you're not going to see any type of a tense shift in the quoted part when we move to indirect. And I know that's a lot of technical terms and you know a lot of grammatical terms are going to be flying on this thing. Just focus on the examples and I think you won't have any trouble.
So our reporting verb is in the present tense. She says, let's do a direct quote. I want to go to the beach. LA. Now, if we change that into indirect speech, we're just going to keep the tense as it is. There won't be any tense shifting. Maria says that she wants to go to the beach. Maria, right? No tense shifting. Now, it did change to right because the subject changed, but the tense did not change. This shouldn't be too hard because this does mirror English.
Now, one thing I want to point out here that's super super important. So, don't fast forward through this part of the video. Let's take a look at that sentence there. That K K is the equivalent of that in the English. Now, the word K has a lot of different meanings and usages in the Spanish language, but with this particular usage, it means that. Now, in English, we can leave that out of, you know, indirect um speech like this. We could say, "Maria says she wants to go to the beach." Or we could say, "Maria says that she wants to go to the beach." It's optional in English. Well, it is not optional in Spanish. That K absolutely positively has to be there. But you'll know to put it there because you speak English. This is one of the advantages you have. But you have to ask yourself, would it be possible for me to put the word that in my English? she says that she wants to go to the beach or she says that she's tired. If I can, then K has to be in the Spanish. And I'm not just talking about indirect quotes. I'm talking about in the language in general. I'll give you another example. Let's say um in English I say the house I bought is green. And I want to make that into Spanish. Can I put a that in there? The house that I bought is green. Yeah, K has to be in there. Here's another example. The pizza I ate last night was delicious. Could I say the pizza that I ate last night? Yes. So K has to be in the Spanish pizza. The important thing is K. Now, if you don't get anything else out of this video, I hope you get that. It's going to give your Spanish a huge boost.
Now, that was quite a rabbit hole we went down, but it was definitely worth it. So, let's get back on topic here. And let's talk about reported speech. Most of the time when we're talking about what someone said, we're doing it that way. It's in the past tense, right? So, our reporting verb is going to be in the past tense. Maria said, Maria asked. Maria commented. past tense reporting verb. And when that happens, our quote could be in any tense. Maria said, um, I'm hungry. Present tense. Maria said, I will go to the beach. Future tense. There could be past tense there. She went to the beach. Could be, you know, past perfect. Had gone to the beach. A lot of options there, folks. A lot of options.
So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through all of those possibilities in changing our quotes into indirect quotes. I'm going to use this little chart right here. Here it is on the screen. And uh it doesn't make any sense to you right now, but it will as we go through it. And it's just going to be a little guide for you. So later on, if you're having trouble with reported speech, you can come back to this. Now, most of this is going to mirror your English very closely, so it's not going to be too tough with the exception of that last one down there. When we're talking about the imperative, switching over to the um imperfect subjunctive, well, folks, that's that's not going to mirror your English at all, but uh doesn't mean you can't learn it.
So our first category is present to imperfect. So what does that mean? Well, present is referring to the tense of the verb in the quote. And when we turn it into an indirect quote, it's going to be changing into the imperfect. We'll start with direct speech. Juan said, "I'm tired." And now indirect Juan said that he was tired. You see, we started with the present tense in the quote and then it became estab. Now, in the English, we also switched to the past tense. So, we're not surprised by that. But knowing to go to the imperfect over the predate with this particular formula is a benefit, don't you think? I think so.
Our next category is going to be future to conditional. And this is going to mirror English very closely. We love that. Our direct quote [Music] Maria said, "I'll go to the beach tomorrow." Our verb in the quotes is in the future tense. So, we change it to indirect. We're going to be working with the conditional. Mariahana, it's in the conditional. It's in the conditional in English, too. Maria said that she would go to the beach tomorrow.
Now, anytime somebody talks about reporting speech, um, one of the things I like to bring up is that um, time expressions, places may change. So, so the story is still relevant. I think this is very, very obvious. If you know, I'm talking about what Maria said and it's still relevant tomorrow. I'm going to keep the word mñana. But let's say I'm talking about that she said this, you know, a week ago. So I might say something like Maria said that she would go to the beach the next day. So instead of tomorrow, I'm saying the next day. We do the same thing with Spanish or whatever you want. Just let your English be your guide. I've seen people spend way too much time on this aspect, you know, changing these time frames and these words, and I I think it's pretty obvious, so I'm not going to do that. But I did mention it.
Our next category is predate to predate or past perfect. You're going to have a couple options here. So we'll start with our direct quote. Juano Juan said, "I visited my parents yesterday." So visit is in the predate. So to change this to indirect speech, we could choose to also use the predate. We just have to make sure you know the conjugation matches, you know, the change of subject. Juan said that he visited his parents yesterday. Now, another option we have is to use the past perfect. And these grammatical terms might throw you off a little bit. The past perfect is had visited. Does that help? I think it helps to have examples. Juan said that he had visited his parents yesterday. So, those are your options there. Now, at this point, you may be like, Paul, I don't like having this many options, buddy. which one should I go with? Let English be your guide. Which one sounds best in English to you given that particular story, how you're phrasing it, and just let that be your guide.
All right. Our next category is going to be present perfect to past perfect. Present perfect is have visited, right? Past perfect had visited. We'll start with the direct quote. Maria, Maria said, I have finished my homework. See, have finished. That's going to be the present perfect. You're learning all kinds of new grammatical terms today, aren't you? Yeah, maybe it's not new to you. Some of you probably know it. So, to change this into indirect speech, we're going to be changing it into the past perfect. Hopefully, you spoke up there. Mariah, Maria said that she had finished her homework.
Our next category is going to be imperfect to imperfect. There's no change here, but I still think it's worth bringing up just so you can see some examples. Start with direct as we always do. Juano, Juan said, "When I was a child, I used to play in the park every day." So, we have two different verbs in the quotes, but they're both in the imperfect. So, when we're going to change this to indirect, just going to keep them in um the imperfect. That part's pretty easy. Juan said that when he was a child, he used to play in the park every day.
Our next category is past perfect to past perfect. No change here either. And I like that. Keep it easy, right? Keep it easy. Our direct quote is Maria said, "I had already studied the topic." We're going to change this to indirect. We're just going to keep it, you know, in the past perfect. Just make sure you pay attention to subject changes. Maria said that she had already studied the topic. This is not too tough, right? No.
Well, it wasn't until this part. We're on to the tough one now. Imperative to the imperfect subjunctive. And this is not going to mirror your English at all. Sorry about that. I'm definitely going to need to swig of coffee before we start this one. So, the imperative is the command form in Spanish. And the imperfect subjunctive is the past tense of the subjunctive. And if you don't know what the subjunctive is, just think of it as a different set of conjugations that are triggered by certain grammatical constructions. And that is the easiest way to explain it because we do have the subjunctive in English, but it is not really that important and is not used to the extent that it is in Spanish. As a result, a lot of students kind of skip around it until they realize how important it is and then they have to come back and learn it. Now, I do have a playlist called Subjunctive Triggers on the main channel. If you're not familiar with the subjunctive or even if you are and you want to get better at it, I you know, just go watch those. If you're a member of my private learning group, the Curu Spanish Crew, I have um several videos on this particular topic in the intermediate section in the classroom.
All right. So our pattern is imperative in the quote and we'll change to imperfect subjunctive in the indirect um speech. So let's go ahead and look at direct. Juano Sierra Juan said close the door. Sierra is in the imperative there. Now we change that into an indirect quote. We're going to be using the imperfect subjunctive and we're going to be popping in a K. And at this point you might be like, "Well, Paul, my English wouldn't have a that. Why is that K there?" Well, that's because this construction does not mirror your English. Well, remember I told you that before. You just have to accept it. I mean, a lot of them did. That was a big advantage you had. But this one you just have to learn as a separate topic. Okay. Juano la. Juan said to close the door would be a close um I'd say English equivalent or it could be Juan told me to close the door or Juan told her or him to close the door. It could be any of those because we just took it out of context.
Let's go ahead and do another one of these because this is a tough construction. I'll make it a little bit clear that um Maria is talking to me. Maria Medoana Maria told me don't open the window. Now, we're going to go ahead and change that into um indirect speech. Maria Medoa. Maria told me not to open the window. Now see that um imperfect subjunctive doesn't match our English. Sorry about that folks. But it is a very learnable pattern and once you learn the pattern you can create sentences you may never have seen or heard before in Spanish but they will be correct. That is the great thing about Spanish and using our English to speak Spanish.
All right. So those are our tense shifts when we do reported speech. We're moving from um direct to indirect. But there are a couple of exceptions and I'm going to talk about them now. There are times when um your reporting verb is going to be in the past tense, but you're still going to be speaking in the present in um indirect speech. And this is going to happen a couple of ways and it's going to mirror English very closely. One of the ways is if the thing you're talking about, the quote is still relevant now. It's still ongoing. Now, here's a good example of that. Maria said that she lives in Mexico. Mariaho gibbe in Mexico. See, we can do that in English, too. We could keep it in, you know, the present tense.
Another time you may hear the present tense is when everybody's together and say, "Somebody just missed something that somebody just said." For example, my friend over here is like, "Hang, I'm hungry." And my other friend's like, "What did he say?" I may just say, "He's hungry." Or I may drop the reporting verb and just keep ki that he's hungry. Or I could say the whole thing. He said that he's hungry. So that's just a couple of exceptions there when you may hear the present tense. Just thought I'd throw them out there.
Now let's move on to questions because there's a couple interesting things here when you talk about reported speech. So I want to make sure you get them right. When you're quoting questions and then changing it to indirect speech, we're going to leave the question word in the indirect speech and we're going to keep the accent mark. This is something I thought was interesting back in the day because, you know, I learned that, you know, for example, let's say when when it's a question word, it has an accent. And when it's just used, you know, as a regular word in a sentence, um, he told me when he would arrive, and it doesn't have an accent. But when we're talking about indirect speech, it's going to keep that accent. That's why I thought this was interesting.
Let's do our direct speech first. Mariatogo, Maria asked, "When did Juan get home?" When did Juan arrive home? So, we're going to make that indirect. Juanasa. See, we still have the accent mark on Guando. Maria asked when Juan arrived home. She asked when Juan got home.
Another thing that's kind of interesting is when we talk about yes or no questions. So, we have a yes or no kind of question in the quote and we're making it, you know, into an indirect speech. We're just going to be using the word C. And that C without the accent on the I. When it has an accent, it means yes. When it doesn't have an accent, it means if. Juan asked, "Do you want to come to the party?" So, we change that to indirect. Juan asked if I wanted to go to the party. See, I'm just using C there. And that might have been pretty obvious. I don't know. I thought it was worth bringing up.
Well, that's the end of the video. If you enjoyed it, just do me a favor and give it a thumbs up. And uh until next time. Aasta leego.