Reporting Statements with "Că"
When you want to share what someone else said—like the latest celebrity gossip or a press release—you use reported speech (Vorbirea indirectă). Just like in English, Romanian uses a reporting verb followed by the conjunction că (that).
Common reporting verbs include a susține (to claim), a nega (to deny), a confirma (to confirm), and a menționa (to mention).
Shifting Pronouns and Possessives
When turning a direct quote into reported speech, you must shift the pronouns and possessives to match the new perspective. First-person words like "I" (eu) or "my" (meu) change to third-person words like "he/she" (el/ea) or "his/her" (lui/ei).
For example, if an actor says, "I didn't start the scandal," you report it as, "The actor denies that he started the scandal."
Verb Tenses in Reported Speech
There is one major difference between English and Romanian reported speech. In English, when the reporting verb is in the past tense (e.g., "mentioned"), we often shift the reported verb backward in time (e.g., "is starting" becomes "was starting").
In Romanian, you typically keep the reported verb in the exact same tense the original speaker used.