Breakdown of Er sagt, die Auswirkung werde das Leben verbessern.
er
he
sagen
to say
das Leben
the life
verbessern
to improve
werden
will (future auxiliary)
die Auswirkung
the impact
Questions & Answers about Er sagt, die Auswirkung werde das Leben verbessern.
Why do we use werde instead of wird in this sentence?
We use werde because this is reported speech using Konjunktiv I (Subjunctive I). A direct statement would be Die Auswirkung wird das Leben verbessern ("The impact will improve life"). By changing wird to the Konjunktiv I form werde, we signal that we are simply reporting what someone else said, distancing ourselves from claiming it as an absolute fact.
How exactly is the future tense constructed in reported speech here?
Just like the regular future tense, it uses a form of werden as the helping verb in the second position, and puts the main verb (verbessern) in its infinitive form at the very end of the sentence. The only difference is that the helping verb takes its Konjunktiv I form (werde) to indicate reported speech.
Why isn't there a dass (that) after Er sagt, ...?
In German reported speech, it is very common to omit dass. When you drop it, the reported clause keeps standard main-clause word order, so the conjugated verb (werde) stays in the second position. If you included dass, the verb would be forced to the end: Er sagt, dass die Auswirkung das Leben verbessern werde.
Could I use the Konjunktiv II form würde here instead?
You shouldn't in this specific sentence. In reported speech, you only swap to Konjunktiv II if the Konjunktiv I form happens to be identical to the regular present tense. For the 3rd-person singular subject die Auswirkung, the regular present is wird and the Konjunktiv I is werde. Since they are clearly different, we stick to werde. Using würde here would instead change the meaning to a hypothetical conditional: "the impact would improve life (if something else happened)."
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