Decir in Spanish: Conjugation and How to Report Speech

You ask your host mom in Quito what time dinner is, and she calls back from the kitchen without even looking up, "Dice que a las siete" — answering for someone else entirely before you've finished the question. Decir (to say, to tell) is one of the first handful of Spanish verbs you actually need for real conversation, not just to state your own thoughts, but to pass along everyone else's: what a friend said, what a sign says, what you were told at the counter.

Why Decir Is Everywhere in Spanish

English speakers usually meet decir as a flat stand-in for "to say" or "to tell," then discover it's doing far more work than that: reporting what someone said (dice que...), asking what a word means (¿qué quiere decir...?), softening a correction (es decir...), and reacting to gossip (¡no me digas!). It's also one of the more irregular verbs in the language — an irregular yo form, a stem change, and a preterite that barely resembles the infinitive. Skip past it and you'll keep reaching for hablar (to speak) in places where only decir sounds natural.

Conjugating Decir in the Present Tense

Decir is irregular in two ways at once, the same combination you've already seen in tener: an irregular yo form, plus an e-to-i stem change in every other form except nosotros/vosotros.

Key Phrases

• Digo (DEE-goh) — I say / I tell
• Dices (DEE-sehs) — you (informal) say/tell
• Dice (DEE-seh) — he/she says/tells, you (formal) say/tell
• Decimos (deh-SEE-mohs) — we say/tell
• Dicen (DEE-sehn) — they say/tell, you all say/tell

[AUDIO: digo] [AUDIO: dices] [AUDIO: decimos]

Notice decimos keeps the plain e — the stem change only lands where the stress does, the same rule that spares tenemos and queremos. The irregular yo form, digo, doesn't follow the stem-change pattern at all; it just swaps in a g, the same trick you've already seen in tengo (tener) and hago (hacer).

Decir Que: Reporting What Someone Said

Grammar Note

To report speech in Spanish, you don't need a separate "reported speech" tense — just a conjugated form of decir, followed by que, followed by a plain statement in the indicative:

• Dice que va a llover. (She says it's going to rain.)
• Mi hermano dice que no puede venir. (My brother says he can't come.)
• ¿Qué dijiste? — Dije que sí. (What did you say? — I said yes.)

Common mistakes:

• Dropping que — "Dice va a llover" sounds clipped and incomplete; Spanish wants the full "Dice que va a llover."
• Reaching for the subjunctive after decir que when it's just repeating information — the subjunctive only shows up if decir is giving an order ("Dice que vengas," She's telling you to come), not stating a fact.

Decir in the Preterite: Dije, Dijiste, Dijo...

Key Phrases

• Dije (DEE-heh) — I said/told
• Dijiste (dee-HEES-teh) — you said/told
• Dijo (DEE-hoh) — he/she said/told
• Dijimos (dee-HEE-mohs) — we said/told
• Dijeron (dee-HEH-rohn) — they said/told

[AUDIO: dije] [AUDIO: dijo] [AUDIO: dijeron]

Grammar Note

The preterite stem, dij-, doesn't resemble the infinitive at all, joining the small family of irregular preterite stems you've already met in tuve (tener) and hice (hacer) — a group sometimes called the pretéritos fuertes (strong preterites) because none of them take the usual accented endings. The one spelling trap: the ellos/ellas form is dijeron, not "dijieron" — the extra i drops, a quirk shared with a few other verbs whose stems end in j, like traer → trajeron.

Common mistake: writing "dijieron" instead of "dijeron" — the extra i looks like it belongs, but it never appears after a j-ending stem in the preterite.

Commands and Everyday Idioms with Decir

Grammar Note

The informal (tú) command form of decir is also irregular — just di, one syllable doing a lot of work:

• ¡Dime! (Tell me!)
• ¡No me digas! (No way! / You don't say!) — literally "don't tell me," but used as an exclamation of surprise, not a real request to stay quiet.

Key Phrases

• Querer decir (keh-REHR deh-SEER) — to mean — "¿Qué quiere decir esta palabra?" (What does this word mean?)
• Es decir (ehs deh-SEER) — that is to say / in other words — "Llega mañana, es decir, el martes." (He arrives tomorrow, that is, Tuesday.)
• Decir la verdad / decir mentiras (deh-SEER lah vehr-DAHD / mehn-TEE-rahs) — to tell the truth / to tell lies

[AUDIO: querer decir] [AUDIO: es decir] [AUDIO: no me digas]

Ask a Spanish-speaking grandmother for advice and you'll often get a dicho instead of a straight answer — a short traditional saying, literally the past participle of decir turned into a noun. "Al mal tiempo, buena cara" (put a good face on bad weather — roughly, keep your chin up) is one you'll hear across Spain and Latin America alike, and collecting a handful of these dichos is one of the fastest ways to sound like you've been speaking Spanish far longer than you actually have.

Putting Decir to Work

Picture yourself getting directions from a shopkeeper in Quito. She rattles off a string of turns, and you don't catch all of it, so you lean toward your friend: "¿Qué dijo?" (What did she say?), and your friend reports it back using decir que: "Dijo que sigas derecho y dobles en la segunda calle" (She said to go straight and turn on the second street). Later, puzzled by a word on a menu, you ask the waiter "¿Qué quiere decir 'chuleta'?" (What does 'chuleta' mean?), and once he tells you it's pork chop, you might answer "¡No me digas, con razón tenía tanta hambre!" (No way, no wonder I was so hungry!) — three completely different jobs for the same five-letter verb, in one five-minute errand.

Practice Exercises

• Fill in the blank: "Ella siempre ___ (says) la verdad." (present tense of decir)
• Translate to Spanish: "He says he can't come tonight."
• Fill in the blank: "Ayer, yo le ___ (told) toda la historia." (preterite of decir)
• Multiple choice: which is correct for "they said" — "dijeron" or "dijieron"?
• Translate to Spanish: "What does this word mean?" (using querer decir)
• Fill in the blank: "¡No me ___ (tell) que perdiste las llaves otra vez!" (tú command of decir)

Answer Key

• "Ella siempre dice la verdad." — dice is the third-person singular present of decir.
• "Él dice que no puede venir esta noche." — decir que + the indicative reports a statement, no subjunctive needed.
• "Ayer, yo le dije toda la historia." — dije is the irregular first-person preterite of decir.
• "Dijeron" is correct — the extra i drops in the ellos/ellas preterite form; "dijieron" is a common misspelling.
• "¿Qué quiere decir esta palabra?" — querer decir is the standard way to ask what a word means.
• "¡No me digas que perdiste las llaves otra vez!" — di is the irregular tú command form of decir.

Key Takeaways

• Decir is irregular in the present (irregular yo form digo, e-to-i stem change) and fully irregular in the preterite (dij- stem, with dijeron dropping the extra i).
• Decir que + the indicative is the everyday way to report what someone said — no special tense needed, and no subjunctive unless decir is giving an order.
• Idioms like querer decir (to mean), es decir (that is to say), and ¡no me digas! (you don't say!) give decir a life far beyond a plain "to say."

Ready to make digo, dije, and dijeron automatic? Try a round of Exercises built around decir's present and preterite forms, or browse Grammar for more of Spanish's essential irregular verbs like this one.