Verbs of Saying, Thinking, and Reporting

Verbs that report what someone said or thought form a tight grammatical class. Linguists call them the verba dicendi (verbs of saying — sagen, erzählen, behaupten, berichten, antworten) and verba sentiendi (verbs of mental state — meinen, glauben, denken, finden, hoffen, wissen, vermuten). They share a job: introducing a chunk of reported content. What you must learn is the shape of that content — usually a verb-final dass-clause, but often, in speech, a dass-less main clause — plus which verbs take a dative recipient and which take ob instead.

The default pattern: a dass-clause

The standard way to report content is a subordinate clause introduced by dass, with the conjugated verb shoved to the very end. A comma always precedes dass:

The mechanics are pure subordinate-clause word order: dass is a subordinating conjunction, so the finite verb (kommt, ist, hat) lands at the end. English keeps normal word order inside its that-clause, which is exactly the habit that trips learners up.

The colloquial alternative: drop dass, keep V2

Here is the insight most textbooks skip. After the mental-state verbs glauben, denken, meinen, finden (and often hoffen, sagen), spoken German very commonly drops dass entirely and uses an ordinary main clause with the verb in second position (V2):

Both versions are correct. Ich glaube, dass er morgen kommt (verb-final) and Ich glaube, er kommt morgen (V2) mean the same thing — but the dass-less V2 form sounds lighter and is the default in conversation. The comma stays in both. The choice is one of register: keep dass for written or careful speech; drop it for everyday talk.

The dative recipient: jemandem etwas sagen

Several saying-verbs name who is being told. That recipient goes in the dative, and the content follows. The pattern is jemandem etwas sagen / erzählen / berichten / erklären / antworten:

Note that thinking-verbs (glauben, denken, meinen, finden) generally do not take a dative recipient — you don't "think something to someone." That is a clean line between the two sub-classes.

sagen vs erzählen vs berichten

These three "tell" verbs are not interchangeable:

• sagen — to say/tell a fact or message, often short: Er hat mir gesagt, dass …
• erzählen — to tell a story / recount at some length, an account or narrative: Sie erzählt von ihrer Reise.
• berichten — to report in a factual, often formal or journalistic sense: Die Zeitung berichtet über den Unfall.

Use sagen for a piece of information, erzählen for a narrative, berichten for a factual report. Erzählen and berichten often pair with von + Dativ or über + Akkusativ for the topic.

fragen: indirect questions take ob or a w-word

The reporting verb fragen does not take dass. Because a question is being reported, you introduce the content with ob (whether/if, for yes-no questions) or a w-word (wann, wo, warum, wie … for content questions). In both cases the verb still goes to the end:

This same ob/w-word pattern follows other verbs of (not) knowing — wissen, sich fragen, keine Ahnung haben — whenever the reported content is itself a question.

Reported speech in formal register: Konjunktiv I

In careful written and journalistic German, reported content after these verbs often appears in Konjunktiv I to mark it explicitly as someone else's claim that the writer does not vouch for:

In everyday speech this is mostly dropped — people just use the indicative (Er sagt, er ist zuversichtlich) or a dass-clause. The Konjunktiv I system is treated in full on the reported-speech pages; here, just recognize sei, habe, komme as the "I'm only reporting this" signal.

English contrast

English and German both use that/dass — but two habits transfer badly:

• Word order inside the clause. English keeps subject-verb-object inside its that-clause ("I think that he is coming"). German sends the verb to the end (… dass er kommt). Carrying English V2 order into a German dass-clause is the number-one error.
• Dropping the conjunction. English freely omits that ("I think he's coming") but keeps the same word order. German can also drop dass — but dropping it switches the clause to V2 (Ich glaube, er kommt). So the two languages drop the conjunction for similar reasons, yet German changes the verb position when it does, and English does not.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Verbs of saying and thinking introduce reported content, usually as a verb-final dass-clause with a comma before dass.
• After glauben, denken, meinen, finden (and often hoffen, sagen), spoken German commonly drops dass and uses V2 (Ich glaube, er kommt).
• Saying-verbs take a dative recipient (jemandem etwas sagen/erzählen); thinking-verbs generally do not.
• fragen introduces reported questions with ob or a w-word, never dass; the verb still goes to the end.
• Keep dass (conjunction) distinct from das (article/relative pronoun) in spelling.