Quoting と
“He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages, will be known far and wide as a smart ass.” – Howard Kandel
Using と to quote something is also very common, and there’s a special pattern to go along with it:
と言いました（といいました）
と言った（といった）
The verb いう means “to say” and the と added in literally makes it mean “with say.” Here’s what it looks like when you’re quoting something. I’m going to write this word in kanji from here on out, just because you’re so close to learning it. Plus, I bet you can take a look at it and come up with your own mnemonic for it right now if you’d like. It just works so much better in kanji, I’m afraid.
「わたし は せんせい」と言った
(He) said “I am a teacher”
In Japanese, quotes are indicated with the 「」symbols, since ” symbols would get in the way of dakuten. You don’t always have to put quotes around, though. That’s only when something is really exactly quoted. You can also use と言った without the Japanese style quotes, if you’re saying something more generally.
ボビーさん は にほんご を ならいたい と 言った
Bobby said he wants to learn Japanese
こういちさん は 日本 に いく と 言った
Koichi said he will go to Japan
The idea with this と is that you say the sentence you want to say, then attach the と言った to the end of it. Since it’s to indicate what someone said about something, you can say whatever you want before attaching it to the end. Why? Because it’s what someone said or is saying – so, as long as you have that right, you can just stick it on the end and it’ll work out just fine.
I think this is fairly simple, but we need to get into a little more depth with this kind of と. We’re going to now look at something that’s kind of similar to this, but in a much more loose way.