Duo Russian Grammar

33) Reported speech

Sequence of tenses in Russian

There is no sequence of tenses in Russian whatsoever.

The information in a subordinate sentence is understood to be relative to the main clause:

  • Он сказа́л, что не зна́ет. = He said he didn't know.

So if the piece of information is simply about where things are or what someone does, use present tense in the subordinate clause.

ли

Use the particle "ли" in reported questions or situations when you don't know which option is true:

  • Я спроси́л, зна́ет ли он Москву́. = I asked him if he knew Moscow.
  • Мы не зна́ем, бу́дет ли он в о́фисе. = We don't know whether he is going to show up in the office.
The particle is attached to the word that is in doubt. It needn't be a verb, for instance, «Я не зна́ю, в Москве́ ли он» (i.e. whether he is in Moscow or in some other city). The particle generally attaches to the first stressed word of the clause.

Talk or say?

The verb говори́ть is used both as "to say, to tell" and as "to talk, to speak". When you report someone's words, obviously, the 2nd meaning is in action:

  • Она говори́т, что хо́чет спать. = She says that she wants to sleep.

Russian has a whole set of perfective verbs. The thing is, usually you arrange verbs neatly into closely matching pairs of imperfective + perfective. And these are different for the two meanings of «говори́ть»:

  • to say → говори́ть / сказ́ать
  • to speak → говори́ть / поговори́ть

Remember «Скажи́те, пожа́луйста ... » ?

Rather than referring to ongoing actions or past(future) actions in general, perfective verbs refer to actions in a point-wise manner, ignoring the action's inner structure. That is, such "singular" actions happen at some particular "moment" and can be conveniently arranged in a sequence when telling a story. This distinction is about to come into focus in one of the following skills.