Reported Speech in Spanish - Part One

Repeating what others say or said

When faced with the challenge of explaining to students about the use of reported speech (discurso referido or estilo indirecto, whichever you prefer) Spanish teachers often present a two columned list that shows the changes in tense that must be made when switching from direct speech to indirect speech in the past.

Teachers also present students with the changes that must be made to the pronouns and adverbs of time and place… In other words, they “make” students accept this list of transformations and ask them to memorize it as best as they can.

I’ve never really liked the use of memory. I mean, I don’t like to abuse the use of memorization; I prefer using logic. I’m deeply convinced –as a lot of people are- that learners assimilate lessons that they understand much better than lessons that they have memorized.

To start from the beginning: when talking about the need to know how to use reported speech in Spanish, we can explain that it usually involves the repetition of speech produced by someone else, and that implies that the subject pronouns change in the following way… Why?

Speech normally involves three levels of speaker participation: the speaker(s), the listener(s), and the person(s) that aren’t part of the conversation.

Then I ask my students “What’s the speaker called?” Usually there’s a brief silence until someone says in a nervous voice, concerned they may be saying something wrong, “YO” . “Yes, of course that’s right!” “And what’s the listener’s name?” “Tú or Usted”. So, El or Ella is the person not involved in the conversation.

I remind my students that when we repeat information, we often do it in the third person, which means that the first and second person pronouns that appear in the original text must be shifted to the third person. Everything’s pretty clear up to this point, and this is how most study guides explain it. But a question arises: what if I’m repeating my own words? Or what if I’m repeating the words of –in a conversation for example- my conversation partner? It’s important to remember that the first rule to respect is that of logic… and in these situations, this pronoun transformation takes on the new role which the estilo indirecto structure marks for each conversation participant.

Later, to show the changes made to adverbs of place, I write on the chalk board the subject pronouns Yo, Tú and Él/Ella. Then I ask the group “What’s the name of the space in which you’re in?”…  Another brief silence falls over the classroom, what I’ve asked seems so easy that students wonder if it’s a trick question. Then someone answers (and if nobody provides the answer, I go ahead and suggest it): “The space I’m in is called “Aquí”, and the space you’re in is “ahí”, and the space he or she is in is called “allí”.

In the middle of my excited explanation, I toss out the following question, which is answered much faster now that my students know that I’m not trying to trick them, I’m just trying to get them to think a little without being scared to say what they think…

“What are the things called that are “Aquí”? … “¡Esto!”, and the things that are “ahí”, “eso”, and things that are “allí”, “aquello”.

Good, now we’ve taken the first step.

All we have left to do is to get into the tenses, and that involves adverbs and adverbs of time, which will lead us to the corresponding verb forms. So I ask a question, the answer of which will be the beginning of our next class:

“What’s the tense called in which Yo is in and how are references to the past, present and future made in that context.

See you next week.