Reported speech

Reporting what someone else said—whether spreading news, relaying facts, or discussing rumors—requires connecting a reporting verb to the original statement.

Reporting Information with أن

When relaying what someone declared, told, or confirmed, Arabic uses reporting verbs like صرح (to declare) or أخبر (to tell) followed by the conjunction أن (that).

Remember that أن is one of the "sisters of Inna." This means the noun that immediately follows it must be in the accusative case (منصوب) or attached as a pronoun suffix (like أنها or أنه).

The Sequence of Tenses (No Backshifting)

Here is the most important rule for reported speech in Arabic: do not change the original tense.

In English, we "backshift" tenses in reported speech (e.g., "I want to go" becomes "She said she wanted to go," or "It will fail" becomes "He said it would fail"). In Arabic, the reported statement stays in the exact same tense the original speaker used:

• If the original quote was a present-tense verb or a present equational (verbless) sentence, it stays in the present when reported.
• If the original quote was in the future tense, it stays in the future.

Notice in the following examples how the English translations use the past or conditional tense, but the Arabic clauses remain in the present (تريد) or future (لن تنتشر).

Claims and Pronouns

When relaying claims using verbs like ادعى (to claim), the same rules apply. If the subject of the reported clause is the same as the speaker, simply attach the corresponding pronoun directly to أن.

The Special Rule for قال

There is one major exception when choosing your conjunction. If your reporting verb is a form of قال (to say), you must use إن instead of أن.

It behaves exactly the same way—taking accusative nouns or attached pronouns—but changes its pronunciation and spelling at the beginning of the quoted clause.