Quotation Panda
Quote, paraphrase, and report what anyone said — with the right shifts, out loud.
When you report speech under a past verb, Spanish shifts everything back one step: dijo: «voy» becomes dijo que iba (present → imperfect), the preterite moves to the pluperfect (comentó que había terminado el informe la noche anterior), and the future becomes the conditional (aseguró que llegaría a tiempo). Time words and pronouns shift with the tenses — hoy → aquel día, mañana → al día siguiente, mi → su. Reported questions drop the question marks and take si (¿vas a venir? → preguntó si iba a venir), and reported commands take que + subjunctive (le dijo que se fuera).
Below: the phrases that carry each pattern, the reporting verbs that quietly signal your stance, and a way to practise the whole system by talking — no drills, no fill-in-the-blanks.
Say this
Regional Spanish
Textbooks teach one word. Locals use several — pick your region's and stay consistent.
Watch out
The part no drill site can do
Carla
Your grammar teacher for this pack
There are no worksheets in the Quotation Panda lessons — you report speech the way it actually happens: someone said something, and now you're telling Carla. She hands you a fresh quote — dijo: «voy mañana» — and you produce the full indirect form out loud: dijo que iba al día siguiente. Then she makes you frame the same quote three ways — afirmó, alegó, admitió — and you hear how each verb changes what the listener believes. By the end you're slipping into free indirect style, voicing a character's thought with no quotation marks at all.
Blank mid-sentence and nothing bad happens — she waits. That's the practice, without unnecessary judgement.
Finish the 6 lessons and Quotation Panda is yours — earned, not given.
First 10 lessons free · 10-minute spoken lessons · your AI coaching team remembers you
Quick answers
When the reporting verb is in the past, the reported tenses move back: present → imperfect (dijo que no pensaba volver), preterite → pluperfect (comentó que había terminado el informe), future → conditional (aseguró que llegaría a tiempo).
Yes/no questions take si and lose the question marks: me preguntó si estaba disponible para una reunión. Question-word questions keep their word: nos preguntó cuándo pensábamos entregar el borrador.
With que + subjunctive: el jefe le pidió que redactara el acta, le ordenó que guardara silencio. The imperfect subjunctive does the work the imperative did in the original.
It's the long dash Spanish uses instead of quotation marks for dialogue, with the speech verb set between dashes: —No pienso volver —dijo ella, sin mirarlo. Embedded quotes use comillas angulares: El ministro declaró: «La reforma es irreversible».
The narrator voices a character's thought without dijo or quotation marks: Miró el reloj. ¿Por qué nadie la llamaba? Tenía que haber ocurrido algo. It's the signature move of literary Spanish — narrator and character blended in one voice.
