Reported speech (indirect speech) is how you relay what someone said without quoting them word for word: not "Jag är trött," sa hon but Hon sa att hon var trött ("She said she was tired"). Swedish makes three adjustments when you do this, and all three will feel familiar to an English speaker: the tense shifts back, the pronouns and "here/now" words shift, and — the one structural surprise — questions lose their inversion and become ordinary subordinate clauses. Master these three moves and you can report anything.
Statements: reporting with att
A reported statement is built with the complementizer att ("that") introducing a subordinate clause. The clause follows subordinate word order (BIFF), and att can often be dropped in informal speech — but the clause stays subordinate either way.
Hon sa att hon var trött.
She said (that) she was tired. att introduces the reported statement. Original words: 'Jag är trött.'
Han tror att vi redan har ätit.
He thinks (that) we've already eaten. att-clause as the object of 'tror'.
For the full behavior of att-clauses — including when att can be omitted — see att-Clauses.
The tense backshift
When the reporting verb is in the past (sa, "said"; tyckte, "thought"), the verb in the reported clause shifts one step back in time — exactly as in English ("She is tired" then "She said she was tired"). The mapping:
| Original (direct) | Reported (after a past reporting verb) |
|---|---|
| present (är) | preteritum / past (var) |
| perfect (har ätit) | pluperfect (hade ätit) |
| past (åt) | pluperfect (hade ätit) |
| ska / kommer att (will) | skulle (would) |
Hon sa att hon var trött och att hon redan hade ätit.
She said she was tired and had already eaten. Present 'är' becomes 'var', perfect 'har ätit' becomes pluperfect 'hade ätit'.
Han lovade att han skulle komma.
He promised he would come. The future 'ska komma' becomes 'skulle komma'.
The backshift is the same logic as English: from the vantage point of a past reporting verb, everything the speaker said is now further in the past, so each tense slides back a notch. The perfect-to-pluperfect step relies on the hade + supine form — see The Pluperfect.
Shifting pronouns and "here/now" words
Because the report comes from your mouth, not the original speaker's, the first-person pronouns and the place/time anchors shift to your perspective — just as in English. Jag ("I") becomes han/hon; här ("here") becomes där ("there"); imorgon ("tomorrow") becomes dagen efter ("the next day"), and so on.
| Original | Reported |
|---|---|
| jag (I) | han / hon (he / she) |
| här (here) | där (there) |
| nu (now) | då (then) |
| imorgon (tomorrow) | dagen efter / nästa dag |
| igår (yesterday) | dagen innan |
Hon sa att hon skulle resa dagen efter.
She said she would travel the next day. Original: 'Jag reser imorgon.' jag becomes hon, reser becomes skulle resa, imorgon becomes dagen efter.
Han sa att han redan var där.
He said he was already there. Original: 'Jag är redan här.' jag becomes han, är becomes var, här becomes där.
Reported questions: the de-inversion
Here is the one move with a structural twist. A direct question in Swedish has inversion (verb before subject): Var bor du? ("Where do you live?"). When you report it, the question becomes a subordinate clause, and subordinate clauses do not invert — so the verb and subject go back to normal order. This de-inversion is the signature of indirectness.
A yes/no question is reported with om ("whether/if"):
Hon undrade om jag ville ha kaffe.
She wondered whether I wanted coffee. Direct: 'Vill du ha kaffe?' (inverted). Reported: 'om jag ville' — subject before verb, no inversion.
A wh-question is reported with the question word acting as the subordinator, and again no inversion:
Han frågade var jag bodde.
He asked where I lived. Direct: 'Var bor du?' (var + verb + subject). Reported: 'var jag bodde' — var + subject + verb. The inversion is GONE.
This is the crucial contrast. The direct question Var bor du? puts the verb second (after var); the reported version var jag bodde puts the subject first and the verb later, following subordinate-clause order. English does the same thing — "Where do you live?" then "He asked where I lived" — but English speakers often forget that Swedish must drop the inversion too. The detail is drilled in Reported Questions and om vs att and Wh-Questions.
Reported commands
A direct command (imperative) is reported with att + skulle, or with an infinitive after verbs like be ("ask") and säga åt ("tell"):
Hon sa att jag skulle stänga dörren.
She said I should close the door. Direct: 'Stäng dörren!' becomes att + skulle + infinitive.
Läraren bad oss vara tysta.
The teacher asked us to be quiet. Direct: 'Var tysta!' becomes 'be' + object + infinitive 'vara'.
Common Mistakes
❌ Han frågade var bodde jag.
Incorrect — a reported question is a subordinate clause and must NOT keep the question inversion.
✅ Han frågade var jag bodde.
He asked where I lived. var + subject + verb (subordinate order).
❌ Hon sa att hon är trött.
Usually incorrect after a past reporting verb — backshift the tense: present 'är' to past 'var'.
✅ Hon sa att hon var trött.
She said she was tired. The present backshifts to the past.
❌ Hon frågade att jag ville ha kaffe.
Incorrect — a reported yes/no question takes 'om' (whether), not 'att' (that).
✅ Hon frågade om jag ville ha kaffe.
She asked whether I wanted coffee.
❌ Han sa att han kommer dagen efter.
Incorrect — after past 'sa', the future 'ska/kommer' backshifts to 'skulle'.
✅ Han sa att han skulle komma dagen efter.
He said he would come the next day.
Key Takeaways
- Report statements with att
- a subordinate (BIFF) clause; att may be dropped informally.
- Backshift when the reporting verb is past: present to past, perfect to pluperfect, ska/kommer att to skulle. No backshift after a present reporting verb.
- Shift pronouns and deixis to your perspective: jag to han/hon, här to där, imorgon to dagen efter.
- Reported questions lose their inversion and become subordinate clauses: Var bor du? becomes ...var du bor. This de-inversion is the key marker of indirectness.
- Yes/no questions use om ("whether"); wh-questions use the question word as subordinator.
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Start learning Swedish→Related Topics
- att-ClausesB1 — att is the complementizer 'that' — the word that turns a clause into the object or subject of a verb (Jag vet att han kommer). Like English 'that', it can be dropped after common verbs of saying and thinking (Jag tror (att) han sover), but the subordinate BIFF order STAYS even when att disappears. Inside an att-clause 'inte' sits before the verb. Keep att (complementizer) firmly distinct from och (and) and from infinitive-marker att.
- The Pluperfect (hade + supine)B1 — The pluperfect (pluskvamperfekt) is hade + supine — the 'past behind the past'. It marks an event already complete before another past event: När jag kom hade de redan ätit ('When I arrived they had already eaten'). It's the workhorse of narration and reported speech, mirrors the English past perfect, and — uniquely useful — doubles as the counterfactual past in conditionals: Om jag hade vetat det... ('If I had known that...').
- Wh-Questions (Question Words)A1 — Information questions in Swedish put a question word first (vad, var, vem, när, hur, varför...) and keep the verb SECOND: Vad gör du? Var bor han? När kommer tåget? There is no 'do' to add. And when the question word IS the subject (Vem ringde?), there is no inversion at all — the question word already fills the first slot.
- Reported Questions and om vs attB2 — Reporting questions in Swedish: yes/no questions with om ('whether/if'), wh-questions with the question word as subordinator, the de-inversion to BIFF order, and the clean om-vs-att split — om questions a fact (open), att asserts a fact (settled).