El estilo indirecto: dijo que…
Somebody says something, and later you repeat it without the quotation marks. English already does the work you are about to learn: 'I'll come' turns into he said he would come, and nobody taught you that on purpose. Spanish does the same thing with the same logic, only more visibly. Dijo: «Estoy cansada» becomes Dijo que estaba cansada. Dijo: «Llegaré el jueves» becomes Dijo que llegaría el jueves. One reporting verb in the past drags everything behind it one step further back, and the words for today and tomorrow move with it. Every tense you need is already in your hands — imperfecto, pluscuamperfecto, condicional, imperfecto de subjuntivo. Today they get their most common job.
Dice que: nothing moves
Start with the easy half. When the reporting verb is in the present — dice que, cree que, piensa que, cuenta que — the tense inside stays exactly as it was spoken. Dice: «Estoy bien» → Dice que está bien. Dice: «Llegaré tarde» → Dice que llegará tarde. Dice: «Comí en la fonda» → Dice que comió en la fonda. Nothing shifts, because nothing has gone stale: the reporting is happening now, so the report is still live. All you do is glue the two halves together with que, and adjust the person — estoy was her word, está is yours. Two housekeeping notes while the sentences are still short. First, que here is never optional; English drops 'that' constantly, Spanish does not. Second, when the report runs to several pieces, Spanish repeats que in front of each one: Dice que está bien, que llegará tarde y que no cenó. Leave the second and third que out and the sentence stops sounding native immediately.
Dijo que: one step back
Now put the reporting verb in the past — dijo, contó, respondió, preguntó — and everything inside steps back one notch. The presente becomes the imperfecto: «Estoy cansada» → Dijo que estaba cansada. The pretérito becomes the pluscuamperfecto: «Comí en la fonda» → Dijo que había comido en la fonda. The futuro becomes the condicional: «Llegaré el jueves» → Dijo que llegaría el jueves. And ir a + infinitive shifts by moving ir alone: «Voy a llamar» → Dijo que iba a llamar. Notice how neatly this reuses what you own — the pair from lesson 31 and the pair from lesson 27 turn out to have been built for exactly this. decir is the workhorse and it is irregular in the past: dije, dijiste, dijo, dijimos, dijeron. That last row does double duty, so Ustedes dijeron que iban a ayudar and Ellos dijeron que iban a ayudar are the same five words with a different pronoun in front.
The tenses with nowhere left to go
Three tenses come out of the shift untouched, and for a satisfying reason: they are already as far back as Spanish goes. The imperfecto stays put — «Estaba cansada» → Dijo que estaba cansada. The pluscuamperfecto stays put — «Ya había comido» → Dijo que ya había comido. The condicional stays put — «Yo no iría» → Dijo que no iría. Which means something worth noticing: Dijo que estaba cansada has two possible originals, «Estoy cansada» and «Estaba cansada», and the reported version cannot tell them apart. Spanish does not care, and neither should you — if the difference matters, the speaker adds a word (Dijo que en ese momento estaba cansada) rather than a tense. The imperfecto de subjuntivo behaves the same way: once a verb is sitting in hablara or tuviera, there is nothing further back to push it into.
Preguntó si, preguntó dónde
Questions get reported with preguntar, and they split in two. A yes-or-no question comes back joined by si: «¿Vienes?» → Me preguntó si venía. «¿Ya cenaste?» → Me preguntó si ya había cenado. This si is 'whether', and it has nothing to do with the si of the conditional lessons — no subjunctive follows it here. A question with a question word keeps that word, accent and all: «¿Dónde vives?» → Me preguntó dónde vivía. «¿Qué hora es?» → Me preguntó qué hora era. «¿Cómo te llamas?» → Me preguntó cómo me llamaba. The written accent on dónde, qué, cómo, cuándo, quién survives, because the sentence is still a question underneath even though the question marks are gone. The word order does not change either: the subject keeps sitting behind the verb, so Me preguntó dónde vivía yo and Me preguntó dónde estaba el mercado are the natural shapes, while English has to flip them into 'where I lived' and 'where the market was'. Keep preguntar for questions; asking somebody for something is pedir, which is a different lesson's verb and a different construction.
Dice que viene, dice que venga
Here is the split that makes decir interesting. decir que + indicative reports information: Dice que viene = she says she is coming. decir que + subjunctive gives an order: Dice que venga = she says to come, she wants me to come. One word of difference, two completely unrelated messages. Push both into the past and the subjunctive goes to the imperfecto de subjuntivo, which is where reported commands live: «¡Ven temprano!» → Me dijo que viniera temprano. «¡No te preocupes!» → Me dijo que no me preocupara. «¡Compren el pescado hoy!» → Nos dijo que compráramos el pescado ese día. The same shape carries pedir — Me pidió que lo ayudara — and avisar with an instruction attached. So an imperative never survives as an imperative: it always arrives dressed as a subjunctive, and if the reporting verb was past, as -ara or -iera.
Yesterday's tomorrow: hoy, mañana, acá
Move a sentence in time and the words that point at time have to move too, or you end up promising something for the wrong day. hoy → ese día. mañana → al día siguiente, or the equally common al otro día. ayer → el día anterior. la semana pasada → la semana anterior. el próximo año → el año siguiente. ahora → en ese momento or entonces. Place and pointing words travel the same road: acá → allá, este → ese or aquel, estos días → esos días. So «Llegaré mañana» becomes Dijo que llegaría al día siguiente, and «Hoy estoy acá» becomes Dijo que ese día estaba allá. Two verbs shift for the same reason, because they are built around where the speaker stands: venir becomes ir and traer becomes llevar when you are no longer the person being come to. And the pronouns follow the obvious rule — my becomes his, I becomes she, «Tengo mi boleto» → Dijo que tenía su boleto.
What people actually say
Everything above is the standard, and you should be able to produce it. Now the honest part: in ordinary Latin American speech the shift is applied far less rigidly than a textbook suggests, and skipping it is not an error. When the reported content is still true, or still ahead, speakers routinely leave the tense alone. Me dijo que llega el jueves. Dijo que está enferma. Me dijo que comió en la fonda. All three are what you will hear at a kitchen table, and all three are perfectly good Spanish — the speaker is signalling 'this still stands' rather than 'this was said once'. The shifted versions are never wrong, and they are what you want in writing, in anything formal, and whenever the content has expired: Dijo que llegaría el jueves quietly tells your listener that Thursday has already come and gone. There is also a relaying habit worth recognising, very common across the region, where the whole message just starts with a bare que: someone shouts from the kitchen, Que dice mi mamá que ya vengan a cenar, or hands you a phone with Que si quieres ir. Nothing is missing; the reporting verb simply got swallowed.
Las palabras de hoy
Three verbs for passing words along, and they are not interchangeable. contar is to tell a story or an event — Me contó toda la conversación — and it is the same verb as counting, stem-changing o→ue: cuento, cuentas, cuenta, contamos, cuentan. contestar and responder both mean to answer and you may pick either, except that the telephone is always contestar: No contesté el teléfono. avisar has no clean English match — it is to let somebody know in advance, and Avísame is one of the most useful words in the region. What you leave when nobody picks up is el recado, or el mensaje if it went by phone; dejar un recado is the fixed phrase. The event itself is la conversación, plural conversaciones with the accent gone, and the verb is conversar — though Mexico and Central America say platicar and la plática, and the Southern Cone says charlar and la charla. cansado takes estar and agrees: estoy cansada. Add de and the meaning turns to fed up: Estoy cansada de esperar. cenar is to eat the evening meal, la cena, and the day around it is regional — midday is el almuerzo in most of South America and la comida in Mexico, where la cena is late and light, while the afternoon snack is la merienda or, in Chile, las onces. Finally the two adjectives that hold the time shift together: siguiente and anterior, neither of which changes for gender, both of which follow their noun — el día siguiente, la noche anterior.
