Today we would talk about “estilo directo” v/s. “estilo indirecto” in our Spanish online lesson. We can also quote it as the Spanish direct v/s indirect speeches. The specialty about this topic is that it would cover both Spanish as well as English grammar rules.

If we talk about Spanish speakers, they commit grammatical errors very rarely when speaking the Spanish language.

Mostly Spanish natives get confused in small things. One of the natives was confused in a sentence which was ‘Le pregunté cuanto costaba el pescado.’ He told us that ‘price’ in this sentence was quoted in the past tense, which according to him was incorrect.

But if you go through the whole sentence thoroughly, you would find no grammatical mistakes in it. The phrase followed correct verb usage, be it Spanish or English Grammar. The statement was ‘Le pregunté cuanto costaba el pescado’ which means ‘I asked him how much did the fish cost’. You can take is as the example of “indirect speech”; it could also be quoted as “reported speech”. In Spanish language, the name given to this form of speech is “estilo indirecto.”

The rules which are really important to understand “estilo indirecto” or indirect speech/reported speech are mentioned below: (These rules would be applicable in both English and Spanish languages)

1: Quotation marks should not be used to point out what a person said.
2: If you are reporting a person’s statement then “It must not follow the word for word pattern”
3: Tenses always change when defining a statement.

Tenses usually change when the speaker describes a particular action or a statement in indirect speech. If somebody is describing something that has already happened, then the tense would always be in the past. Hence whatever is the case, the action done or the statement quoted always changes the tense.

Problems in learning arise due to our negligence in following the grammatical rules. Same is the case with errors related to “estilo indirecto” or indirect/reported speeches. We make a lot of mistakes in describing instances, so we must keep in mind all the rules of indirect speeches.