Breakdown of Ela disse que o céu estaria muito nublado hoje.
ela
she
muito
much / very
estar
to be (temporary / location)
hoje
today
dizer
to say
que
that (conjunction)
o céu
the sky
nublado
cloudy
Questions & Answers about Ela disse que o céu estaria muito nublado hoje.
Why do we use the conditional estaria here instead of the future tense estará?
This is a classic example of reported speech. The original direct quote was a future prediction: O céu estará muito nublado (The sky will be very cloudy). Because the reporting verb disse is in the past tense, the future indicative estará must shift back one step in time to the conditional estaria (would be).
Why didn't the time word hoje change to naquele dia in this reported sentence?
Time words in reported speech only change if the speaker's time perspective has moved on. Keeping hoje tells us that she made this prediction earlier on this exact same day. If someone were reporting this tomorrow or next week, they would have to shift hoje to naquele dia (that day).
Why is the verb estar used here for the sky, rather than ser?
In everyday speech, could I use a different tense instead of the conditional estaria?
Yes, in informal spoken Portuguese, native speakers frequently replace the conditional with the imperfect. However, if you say Ela disse que o céu estava muito nublado, it can be ambiguous: it might mean she said it would be cloudy, or it might just mean she said it was cloudy. Using the conditional estaria completely removes that ambiguity.
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