Hello All,

So, my Esperanto learning is still in its early stages. I'm going through several resources slowly. At times I try to translate some short fragment of English into Esperanto as an exercise with varying degrees of success.

I've come to understand that quoted speech in Esperanto does not work the same as it does in English. Can quoted speech take the nominative case? What about block quotes?

Also, I read the "Modern Evolution of Esperanto" that there are some proposals to "fix" an issue with Esperanto and quoted speech. Something about the use of "citi" and "na" in relation to quotations but the passage was unclear.

Would someone be kind enough to explain? Thanks!

I can't say that I have seen much use of the preposition 'cit'. In my experience quotation marks are used to show that something is a quotation.

There are, however, some variations in those marks.

As far as quoted speech working differently in Esperanto, it has nothing to do with the form of the quotes, or with any weird prepositions, or direct objects. It has to do with verb tense.

In English, the verb tense changes when we show quotes, versus when we use a "reported speech" form. The tense goes one more tense into the past with reported speech, if you will.

For example:
She said, "I will come tomorrow". (quote)
She said that she would come tomorrow. (reported speech).

will come -- would come. Change in tense.

Mary said, "I am in Paris" (quote)
Mary said that she was in Paris. (reported speech)

saw -- had seen. Change in tense.

Esperanto uses the SAME tense for quotes as it uses for reported speech.

Ŝi diris, "Mi venos morgaŭ."
Ŝi diris ke ŝi venos morgaŭ (NOT Ŝi diris ke ŝi venus morgaŭ)

Mary diris, "Mi estas en Parizo"
Mary diris ke ŝi estas en Parizo. (NOT Mary diris ke ŝi estis en Parizo)

This is tricky for English speakers because we are used to changing the tense for reported speech. If you think to yourself the English sentence "Mary said that she was in Paris", you say, oh, that should be "Mary diris ke ŝi estis en Parizo". But that's wrong! Because you have to think of that the original "quote" version would have been, and base your grammatical tense on that. Otherwise, if you said "Mary diris ke ŝi estis en Parizo", that means that Mary's original quote was "Mi estis en Parizo", which obviously has a different meaning.

This is what is meant by Esperanto and English having different systems for quoted speech. It has to do with verb tense, not direct object. There is no such thing as quoted speech being marked out as being some kind of direct object; I have never heard of it before it was mentioned in this thread.

Don't take too seriously what you read in that Wikipedia article. Some of the things it mentions are true developments in Esperanto grammar. Other things that it mentions are reform proposals that I have never heard of before, that must be used by few or no people. The article doesn't distinguish in any way between true changes and proposed changes. In short - if you read something in an article that isn't taught in your Esperanto courses, I wouldn't use that form. It's best to wait until you get into the Esperanto community, to find out which forms are or aren't used.