Reported speech (discours indirect) means recounting what someone said instead of quoting it directly: instead of 'Il a dit : « Je suis fatigué »' you write 'Il a dit qu'il était fatigué.' The moment you drop the quotation marks and introduce the reported clause with que, French applies a rule called la concordance des temps — tense backshifting — whenever the reporting verb (dire, expliquer, annoncer, répondre, etc.) is itself in a past tense. The tense of the original, directly-quoted sentence shifts back by one 'notch' to reflect that it is now being reported from a later vantage point.
The shifts follow a fixed pattern that is worth memorizing as a table. Présent becomes imparfait: 'Je suis fatigué' → 'qu'il était fatigué.' Passé composé becomes plus-que-parfait: 'J'ai fini' → 'qu'il avait fini.' Futur simple becomes conditionnel présent: 'Je viendrai' → 'qu'il viendrait.' Futur antérieur becomes conditionnel passé: 'J'aurai terminé' → 'qu'il aurait terminé.' Tenses that already express relative anteriority or hypotheticality — imparfait, plus-que-parfait, and conditionnel (both forms) — do not shift any further; they stay exactly as they were in the original utterance, because there's nowhere further back for them to go.
Crucially, this backshift is triggered by the tense of the REPORTING verb, not by some absolute rule that reported speech must always be in the past. If you report speech using a present-tense reporting verb ('il dit que...', 'elle affirme que...'), no backshift happens at all — the quoted tense is preserved exactly: 'Il dit qu'il est fatigué' (He says he is tired), 'Il dit qu'il viendra' (He says he will come). It is only when the reporting verb itself sits in a past tense (a dit, a expliqué, avait annoncé) that the quoted material must shift backward to stay logically consistent with a report being made after the fact.
Reported speech also drags time and place expressions along with it, and this is where English speakers most often forget a step even when they've nailed the verb tenses. 'Aujourd'hui' becomes 'ce jour-là'; 'hier' becomes 'la veille'; 'demain' becomes 'le lendemain'; 'la semaine prochaine' becomes 'la semaine suivante'; 'maintenant' becomes 'à ce moment-là'; 'ici' becomes 'là'. So 'Je pars demain' reported the next day is not 'il a dit qu'il partirait demain' (which would now mean the wrong day) but 'il a dit qu'il partirait le lendemain' — the deictic anchor moves from the moment of speaking to the moment being narrated.
Exemples
« Je suis malade. » → Elle a dit qu'elle était malade.
"I'm sick." → She said she was sick.
Présent → imparfait.
« J'ai perdu mes clés. » → Il a expliqué qu'il avait perdu ses clés.
"I lost my keys." → He explained that he had lost his keys.
Passé composé → plus-que-parfait.
« Je viendrai demain. » → Il a promis qu'il viendrait le lendemain.
"I'll come tomorrow." → He promised he would come the next day.
Futur simple → conditionnel présent; 'demain' → 'le lendemain'.
« J'aurai fini avant midi. » → Elle a annoncé qu'elle aurait fini avant midi.
"I will have finished before noon." → She announced she would have finished before noon.
Futur antérieur → conditionnel passé.
« J'étais très occupé hier. » → Il a répété qu'il était très occupé la veille.
"I was very busy yesterday." → He repeated that he had been very busy the day before.
Imparfait stays imparfait; 'hier' → 'la veille'.
« Je viendrais si j'avais le temps. » → Elle a dit qu'elle viendrait si elle avait le temps.
"I would come if I had time." → She said she would come if she had time.
Conditionnel présent is unchanged after a past reporting verb.
Il dit qu'il est prêt.
He says he is ready.
Reporting verb in the present: no backshift at all.
« Je pars ce soir. » → Elle m'a écrit qu'elle partait ce soir-là.
"I'm leaving tonight." → She wrote to me that she was leaving that evening.
'Ce soir' shifts to 'ce soir-là' once reported from a later vantage point.
« Nous nous verrons la semaine prochaine. » → Ils ont dit qu'ils se verraient la semaine suivante.
"We'll see each other next week." → They said they would see each other the following week.
Erreurs fréquentes
- Leaving the time expression untouched after backshifting the verb, e.g. saying 'il a dit qu'il partirait demain' instead of 'le lendemain', which misdates the event.
- Applying the backshift even when the reporting verb is in the present ('il dit que' wrongly followed by an imparfait or conditionnel, when the original tense should be preserved).
- Confusing futur simple → conditionnel présent with the unrelated 'si-clause' conditionnel, and mixing up which conditionnel form (présent vs passé) corresponds to which original future tense.
- Trying to backshift an imparfait, plus-que-parfait, or conditionnel any further, when these tenses are already 'terminal' and simply carry over unchanged.
- Forgetting to change first/second person pronouns and possessives to match the new reporting perspective (je → il/elle, mes → ses) while focusing only on the verb tense.
Pourquoi ça trompe les anglophones
- English also backshifts tenses in reported speech ('I am tired' → 'she said she was tired'), which creates a false sense that the rule is identical — but French additionally distinguishes futur/conditionnel and plus-que-parfait pairings that don't map one-to-one onto the two-tense English system.
- The parallel shift in time/place words (aujourd'hui → ce jour-là, demain → le lendemain) has no equivalent habit in English reported speech, where speakers often just keep 'tomorrow' or loosely say 'the next day' inconsistently, so it's easy to forget in French.
- Because the backshift depends on the tense of the reporting verb rather than being automatic, learners who over-generalize 'reported speech = past tense' end up incorrectly backshifting even after present-tense reporting verbs.