nihongo wo benkyou shitai

Just as I started today's update, I said "Just how hard can quoting speech be?". As it turns out, it carries a PPT rating (Potentially Pete Tong - see below) of 5/10 - so not too bad. However, it is more complex than I thought and does require a bit of care before you go slapping a sentence together.

As we know, the Japanese verb for 'talk' is 言う. However, in order to ensure that there is no confusion as to the fact that you are quoting someone, we put the quoting particle と in front of this. Also, if you quote someone, what they said actually occurred in the past, so the whole thing becomes ーと言った. If only that were it...

However it's not. A lot more common is the use of ーと言っている and ーと言っていった. So I guess the big question is when do you use each of the three options?

1. ーと言った - This nice, simple form is used when conveying a fact that has no direct impact on the listener. Also, this simple form is usually used when quoting somethin g you yourself have previously said. If used to quote someone else, it can soound a little childish.
   
2. ーと言っていった - can be used to convey one of three bits of information: whatever is being quoted (1) has a direct impact on the listener (2), was said (a number of times) of a period of time and (3) was said by a third person. It can be translated literally as "has been saying" and as such impies that whatever is being quoted doesn't necessarily have strong links to the present.
   
3. ーと言っている - can be used to convey one of three bits of information: whatever is being quoted (1) has a direct impact on the listener (2), was said (a number of times) of a period of time and (3) was said by a third person. It can be translated literally as "is saying" and as such implies the quote has some strong connection to the present.
   

Things do get a bit tricky as there are two ways in which you can quote someone: directly and indirectly. In direct quotation you convey what was said word-for-word. In indirect quotation, you paraphrase the speaker's words.

A direct quote will look something like this:

[person being quoted] は 「quote」 と言っている。

While an indirect 'quoting sentence' will look something like this:

[person being quoted] は [quote (short form)] と言っている。

One thing to note is that in indirect quotes the quoted part should be in short form, so either base 1 (for negative tense), base 3 (for present) and base 7 (for past). Let's try it out...

English: She said that the film she saw last week was interesting.
Jenglish: [she][last week][saw][film][intersting][said]
日本語：　　　彼女は先週見た映画が面白かったと言っていました。

English: He says I will not pass the exam.
Jenglish: [he][I][exam][not pass][said]
日本語： 彼は私が試験を合格しないと言っています。

English: When I was a child, my mother told me not to speak to strangers.
Jenglish: [child][when][mother][strangers][not speak][told]
日本語： 子供の時に母は知らない人を話しないと言っていました。

English: Now, she says "Don't speak to strange women".
Jenglish: [now][she][strange][women][don't speak][says]
日本語： 今、彼女は「知らない女の人を話しません」と言っています。

またね。。。

Oh yeah... for non-English readers, the Potentially Pete Tong Rating is named after one of the world's great DJ's Pete Tong. Pete Tong is also Cockney Rhyming slang for 'wrong' and you often here the phrase "It's all gone a bit Pete Tong" meaning that something has not gone to plan.