The Reported-Speech System: Overview | Korean Grammar

When you tell someone what a third person said — "she said it's raining," "he asked when I was coming," "they told us to hurry" — you're using reported speech. Korean has a tidy, highly systematic way of doing this, but it's organized on a principle English speakers don't expect. English keeps the reporting simple: it reuses the verb, back-shifts the tense ("she said she was tired"), and lets word order and intonation carry the rest. Korean instead makes the sentence type of the original utterance — statement, question, command, or proposal — pick a dedicated connector, neutralizes the original politeness, and leaves the tense alone. This page is the map of the whole system; each branch gets its own detailed page.

Two modes: direct and indirect

Direct quotation (직접 인용) repeats the original words verbatim, wraps them in quotation marks, and marks them with 라고 (or, more vividly, 하고) before a speech verb. The quoted words keep their exact original form — politeness and all.

미나가 “집에 가요”라고 했어요.

minaga “jibe gayo”rago haesseoyo

Mina said, “I'm going home.”

Indirect quotation (간접 인용) recasts the utterance into the speaker's own words: the quote becomes a plain-form clause, it drops its quotation marks, its politeness collapses, and it joins the speech verb with 고. The same idea, absorbed into your sentence:

미나가 집에 간다고 했어요.

minaga jibe gandago haesseoyo

Mina said she's going home.

Everyday Korean leans heavily on the indirect mode — it's what you use to relay, summarize, and gossip. Direct quotation shows up when you want the flavor of the exact words (drama, storytelling, citing a title). The rest of this system is about indirect quotation.

The core principle: the connector follows the sentence TYPE

Here is the idea to build everything on. In indirect quotation, the connector you attach to the plain-form clause is chosen by what kind of sentence the original was — not by tense, not by politeness, but by mood:

Original sentence type	Connector	Speech verbs	Example (원문 → 간접)
Statement (평서문)	-다고 / -(느)ㄴ다고	하다, 말하다, 그러다	비가 와요 → 비가 온다고 해요
Question (의문문)	-냐고	묻다, 물어보다, 하다	어디 가요? → 어디 가냐고 물어요
Command (명령문)	-(으)라고	하다, 말하다, 시키다	빨리 와요 → 빨리 오라고 해요
Proposal (청유문)	-자고	하다, 그러다	같이 가요 → 같이 가자고 해요

One example of each so the pattern is concrete:

비가 온다고 했어요.

biga ondago haesseoyo

He said it's raining. (statement)

언제 오냐고 물었어요.

eonje onyago mureosseoyo

She asked when I'm coming. (question)

빨리 오라고 했어요.

ppalli orago haesseoyo

He told me to come quickly. (command)

같이 가자고 했어요.

gachi gajago haesseoyo

She suggested we go together. (proposal)

Four utterance types, four connectors. Once you can classify the original sentence — is this a statement, a question, an order, or a "let's"? — the connector is decided. Each type has its own page with the full conjugation detail: statements -다고, questions -냐고, commands -(으)라고, and proposals -자고.

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Build any indirect quote in three moves: (1) classify the original — statement, question, command, or proposal — to pick the connector; (2) strip the politeness — everything inside the quote goes to plain form; (3) shift the pronouns and here/now words to your standpoint. Korean never touches the tense the way English does.

Politeness is neutralized inside the quote

This is the second big departure from English. Whatever speech level the original was in — polite 해요체, deferential 합니다체, blunt 반말 — it collapses to the plain (한다체) form once it's inside an indirect quote. The politeness of the whole sentence is then carried entirely by the final speech verb (했어요 vs 했습니다 vs 했어). So a very polite original and a casual one give the same embedded clause:

그가 “저는 학생입니다”라고 했어요.

geuga “jeoneun haksaeng-imnida”rago haesseoyo

He said, “I am a student.” (direct — keeps the formal 합니다체)

그가 자기는 학생이라고 했어요.

geuga jagineun haksaeng-irago haesseoyo

He said he's a student. (indirect — politeness gone, 저 → 자기)

Notice two shifts at once. The formal 학생입니다 flattens to the plain quoted form 학생이라고, and the first-person 저 becomes 자기 ("himself"), because you're now reporting from your vantage point, not his. That pronoun-and-deixis shift, plus the spoken contractions this system produces, are detailed on the shifts and contractions page.

No tense back-shift

English mechanically pushes the tense back one step when the reporting verb is past: "It's raining" → "She said it was raining." Korean does not do this. The tense inside a Korean quote is the real, original tense — you re-encode the mood, never the tense. If the woman said "I'm tired" (present), you report it with a present-tense clause even though your 했어요 is past:

그녀가 피곤하다고 했어요.

geunyeoga pigonhadago haesseoyo

She said she's tired. (lit. she said 'I am tired' — present kept, not back-shifted)

If you instead say 피곤했다고 했어요, you are reporting that she said "I was tired" — a genuinely different claim about a past state, not an English-style grammatical back-shift. This is actually easier than English once you trust it: you copy the original tense straight in and change only the ending's type.

Colloquial speech verbs and contractions

The default speech verb is 하다 (say/do), but in conversation 그러다 ("say/go") is just as common: 간다고 그랬어요 = 간다고 했어요 ("said [he]'s going"). And because these strings are so frequent, spoken Korean contracts each type down to a single fused ending — -다고 해요 → -대요, -냐고 해요 → -냬요, -(으)라고 해요 → -래요, -자고 해요 → -재요. Those relay endings are what you'll actually hear most; they get full treatment on the shifts and contractions page.

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What you'll actually hear is rarely the full -고 하다 string. Spoken Korean fuses it: 간다고 해요 → 간대요, 가냐고 해요 → 가냬요, 오라고 해요 → 오래요, 가자고 해요 → 가재요. Train yourself to hear these contractions as reported speech, or a rapid 간대요 will land like a mystery ending.

Common Mistakes

1. Leaving a polite ending inside the quote. The embedded clause must be plain form; the politeness lives on the outer verb.

❌ 미나가 집에 가요고 했어요.

Wrong — you can't quote the polite 가요; it collapses to plain 간다.

✅ 미나가 집에 간다고 했어요.

minaga jibe gandago haesseoyo

Mina said she's going home.

2. Picking the connector by tense or politeness instead of by type. The type of the original sentence decides it — a question needs -냐고, never the statement -다고.

❌ 어디 가다고 물었어요.

Wrong — reporting a question needs -냐고, not the statement -다고.

✅ 어디 가냐고 물었어요.

eodi ganyago mureosseoyo

She asked where I was going.

3. Back-shifting the tense the English way. Don't push a present original into the past; copy the original tense.

❌ 그녀가 피곤했다고 했어요.

This actually reports 'she said I WAS tired' — a different claim; don't back-shift a present original.

✅ 그녀가 피곤하다고 했어요.

geunyeoga pigonhadago haesseoyo

She said she's tired.

4. Confusing the direct-quote 라고 with the indirect connector. After a verbatim quote in marks, use 라고; a plain-form statement takes -다고, not ×-다라고.

❌ 미나가 간다라고 했어요.

Wrong — indirect statement is 간다고, not 간다라고 (라고 is for verbatim quotes).

✅ 미나가 간다고 했어요.

minaga gandago haesseoyo

Mina said she's going.

Key Takeaways

Direct quotation: verbatim words in marks + 라고 (or 하고) + speech verb. Indirect: a plain-form clause + 고
- speech verb.
In indirect quotation the connector is chosen by the sentence type of the original: statement -다고, question -냐고, command -(으)라고, proposal -자고.
Politeness is neutralized inside the quote (everything → plain form); the outer speech verb carries the politeness.
Korean does not back-shift the tense — copy the original tense and change only the mood.
Pronouns and here/now words shift to your standpoint; -고 하다 strings contract to -대요 / -냬요 / -래요 / -재요 in speech.

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