Decir Conjugation: All Tenses, Explained Simply (with Examples)
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Decir means “to say” or “to tell”, and it's one of the verbs you'll reach for constantly in Spanish, which is unfortunate news for anyone hoping for an easy ride, because it's also one of the most irregular verbs in the whole language. The yo form isn't deco, it's digo. The preterite isn't decí, it's dije. The future isn't deciré, it's diré. Even the past participle and the gerund go their own way: dicho and diciendo. And the informal command is just two letters, di.
Don't panic. By the end of this guide you'll have every tense of decir laid out in clean tables, with example sentences for each, plus a clear sense of when to reach for decir versus its cousins hablar and contar. But first, the hack that saves you weeks of work.
The Decir Conjugation Hack: Learn These First
Here's the honest truth about conjugation tables: you do not need to memorise all seventeen tenses before you can use decir in real conversation. Native-sounding beginners lean on a tiny handful of forms.
If you learn nothing else today, learn the present tense of decir by heart:
- digo (“I say”), dices (“you say”), dice (“he/she/it says”), decimos (“we say”), decís (“you all say”), dicen (“they say”)
That single row of six words lets you report what people say, ask how to say something (“¿cómo se dice…?”), and narrate everyday conversation. Add the preterite (dije, “I said”) for talking about what was actually said in the past, and you've covered most of everyday speech. Everything below that is for rounding out your Spanish over time, not for blocking you today.
Right, now let's build the full picture.
Decir at a Glance
| Infinitive | decir |
| Gerund (-ing) | diciendo |
| Past participle | dicho |
| Verb type | irregular |
| English meaning | “to say, to tell” |
A quick note on the pronouns I'll use in every table:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| yo | I |
| tú | you (informal singular) |
| él / ella / usted | he / she / you (formal singular) |
| nosotros / nosotras | we |
| vosotros / vosotras | you all (informal, Spain) |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | they / you all (formal) |
Decir Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Simple Tenses)
The indicative is the everyday, “stating facts” mood, and these five simple tenses are the backbone of decir. Here they all are in one place:
| Pronoun | Present | Preterite | Imperfect | Future | Conditional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| yo | digo | dije | decía | diré | diría |
| tú | dices | dijiste | decías | dirás | dirías |
| él / ella / usted | dice | dijo | decía | dirá | diría |
| nosotros/as | decimos | dijimos | decíamos | diremos | diríamos |
| vosotros/as | decís | dijisteis | decíais | diréis | diríais |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | dicen | dijeron | decían | dirán | dirían |
Notice that the imperfect (decía, decías…) is perfectly regular, it behaves exactly like any other -ir verb. The irregularity is all in the present, preterite, future, and conditional.
And here's each one in action:
- Present – Siempre digo lo que pienso. – “I always say what I think.”
- Preterite (a finished past event) – Le dije la verdad ayer. – “I told him/her the truth yesterday.”
- Imperfect (a past description or repeated state) – Mi abuela siempre decía que la paciencia lo cura todo. – “My grandmother always used to say that patience cures everything.”
- Future – Te lo diré cuando lo sepa. – “I'll tell you when I know.”
- Conditional – Yo no diría eso en su lugar. – “I wouldn't say that if I were her.”
Decir Conjugation: Indicative Mood (Compound Tenses)
Good news here: the compound tenses are the easy part. Every one of them is simply the verb haber (conjugated) plus the past participle dicho. Learn haber once and these fall into place for every verb in Spanish, just don't forget that dicho itself is irregular (the regular form would be decido, which doesn't exist here, that's actually the present tense of a completely different verb, decidir, “to decide”).
| Pronoun | Present Perfect | Pluperfect | Future Perfect | Conditional Perfect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| yo | he dicho | había dicho | habré dicho | habría dicho |
| tú | has dicho | habías dicho | habrás dicho | habrías dicho |
| él / ella / usted | ha dicho | había dicho | habrá dicho | habría dicho |
| nosotros/as | hemos dicho | habíamos dicho | habremos dicho | habríamos dicho |
| vosotros/as | habéis dicho | habíais dicho | habréis dicho | habríais dicho |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | han dicho | habían dicho | habrán dicho | habrían dicho |
- Present perfect – No me has dicho tu nombre todavía. – “You haven't told me your name yet.”
- Pluperfect – Ya me había dicho eso la semana pasada. – “He had already told me that last week.”
- Future perfect – Para el viernes, ya se lo habré dicho a todos. – “By Friday, I will have told everyone.”
- Conditional perfect – Habría dicho algo, pero no quería interrumpir. – “I would have said something, but I didn't want to interrupt.”
(There's one more, the pretérito anterior, hube dicho, but you can happily ignore it. It's so rare in modern Spanish that even native speakers go their whole lives without using it.)
Decir Conjugation: Subjunctive Mood
The subjunctive is the mood of doubt, wishes, emotion, and things that aren't (yet) facts. It feels intimidating at first, but with decir you really only need two forms day to day: the present subjunctive and the imperfect subjunctive.
| Pronoun | Present Subjunctive | Imperfect Subjunctive (-ra) | Imperfect Subjunctive (-se) |
|---|---|---|---|
| yo | diga | dijera | dijese |
| tú | digas | dijeras | dijeses |
| él / ella / usted | diga | dijera | dijese |
| nosotros/as | digamos | dijéramos | dijésemos |
| vosotros/as | digáis | dijerais | dijeseis |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | digan | dijeran | dijesen |
The imperfect subjunctive has two forms, the -ra and the -se. They mean exactly the same thing and are interchangeable; the -ra form is more common in speech, especially in Latin America, so lead with that one.
- Present subjunctive – Espero que digas la verdad. – “I hope (that) you tell the truth.”
- Imperfect subjunctive – Si me dijeras la hora, te lo agradecería. – “If you told me the time, I'd be grateful.”
The subjunctive also has compound forms, built (again) from haber plus dicho:
| Pronoun | Present Perfect Subj. | Pluperfect Subj. |
|---|---|---|
| yo | haya dicho | hubiera / hubiese dicho |
| tú | hayas dicho | hubieras / hubieses dicho |
| él / ella / usted | haya dicho | hubiera / hubiese dicho |
| nosotros/as | hayamos dicho | hubiéramos / hubiésemos dicho |
| vosotros/as | hayáis dicho | hubierais / hubieseis dicho |
| ellos / ellas / ustedes | hayan dicho | hubieran / hubiesen dicho |
There's also a future subjunctive (dijere, dijeres…), but you can safely file it under “nice to recognise, never need to produce”. It survives only in legal documents and a few fixed phrases, the same fate as most future subjunctives in modern Spanish.
Decir Conjugation: Imperative Mood (Commands)
Telling someone to say something, tell me!, don't say that!, uses the imperative. The one to watch is the informal tú command, di, just two letters, no accent, and so short it barely looks like a verb at all.
| Pronoun | Affirmative | Negative |
|---|---|---|
| tú | di | no digas |
| usted | diga | no diga |
| nosotros/as | digamos | no digamos |
| vosotros/as | decid | no digáis |
| ustedes | digan | no digan |
- ¡Dime la verdad! – “Tell me the truth!” (di + me joined into one word, as commands do with pronouns)
- No digas nada. – “Don't say anything.”
When to Use Decir
Decir covers both “to say” and “to tell” in English, Spanish doesn't split them the way English does, so decir does double duty:
- Dice que llega tarde. – “He says (that) he's arriving late.”
- Me dijo su nombre. – “She told me her name.”
Notice the little word que (“that”) shows up constantly after decir: decir que is how you report what someone said, and in spoken Spanish it's almost never dropped the way “that” sometimes is in English. Dijo que sí (“He said that yes/he said yes”) reads far more naturally than skipping the que.
Where decir gets confused is with its two near-neighbours:
- Hablar (“to speak/talk”) is about the act of speaking, not the content. Hablo español (“I speak Spanish”) is about ability and language, not about what you said.
- Contar (“to tell”, as in tell a story) is for narratives, jokes, and secrets. Cuéntame un cuento (“Tell me a story”) uses contar, not decir, because you're relaying a story, not a single statement.
A rough rule that works most of the time: if you can swap in “say” in English, reach for decir. If you'd swap in “tell a story/joke/secret”, reach for contar. If it's about the act of speaking a language or talking at all, reach for hablar.
Why Is Decir So Irregular?
Decir piles up four separate irregularity patterns, which is exactly why it feels harder than it should.
- The e→i stem change. Decir belongs to the same family as pedir and servir: wherever the stress falls on the stem, the e tightens to i. That's why dices, dice, and dicen all show dic-, while the unstressed decimos and decís keep the original dec-.
- The g-insertion. The yo form and the whole present subjunctive show a g that doesn't appear anywhere else in the verb: digo, diga, digas… This is the same pattern Spanish shows in tener→tengo, poner→pongo, and salir→salgo, though decir came by its g honestly: it's the c of Latin dīcō, softened over the centuries.
- The strong j-preterite. Dije, dijiste, dijo… comes from an old “strong” Latin preterite, the same family as traje (traer) and conduje (conducir). One quirk worth memorising on its own: the ellos/ellas/ustedes form is dijeron, not dijieron, any preterite stem ending in j drops the i in that ending, so it's dijeron, trajeron, condujeron across the board.
- The syncopated future/conditional. Diré, dirás… drops a whole syllable from decir + é. This happens because the future and conditional were originally built by fusing the infinitive with haber, and a handful of common verbs (decir→dir-, hacer→har-, poder→podr-, tener→tendr-) lost a vowel along the way. Once you spot the pattern, diré stops looking random.
Common Mistakes with Decir
A few traps that catch nearly everyone:
- Reaching for decido instead of dicho. The past participle of decir is dicho (“said/told”), full stop. He decido isn't real Spanish at all: “I have said” is he dicho, and “I have decided” is he decidido (from decidir). Two similar-looking verbs, easy to mix up when you're typing fast.
- Mixing up di (the command) with de (the preposition). Di (“say!/tell!”) and de (“of/from”) are one vowel apart and both tiny, high-frequency words, so they're easy to swap on the page even once you know the difference out loud.
- Regularising the preterite to decí. Because decir is an -ir verb, learners sometimes guess the yo preterite is decí, following the regular pattern. It isn't. The real form is the strong preterite dije, no accent, from the same strong Latin preterite family as traje and conduje.
Decir Conjugation FAQ
Is decir regular or irregular? Irregular, and one of the more heavily irregular verbs in Spanish. It stacks an e→i stem change, a g-insertion, a strong j-preterite, and a syncopated future all in one verb.
What are the six present-tense forms of decir? Digo, dices, dice, decimos, decís, dicen, which is “I say, you say, he/she says, we say, you all say, they say.”
How do you conjugate decir in the past? The preterite (for finished, reported statements) is dije, dijiste, dijo, dijimos, dijisteis, dijeron. The imperfect (for habitual or ongoing past speech) is perfectly regular: decía, decías, decía, decíamos, decíais, decían.
What's the difference between decir, hablar, and contar? Decir reports what was said (“say/tell”). Hablar is the act of speaking or talking, with no content implied. Contar is for telling a story, joke, or secret, a narrative rather than a single statement.
What's the tú command form of decir? Di, as in ¡Dime! (“Tell me!”). It's irregular, just two letters, and completely different from the -e endings you'd expect on a regular -ir verb command.
¡Ya Sabes Cómo Se Dice!
Ya sabes cómo se dice means “now you know how to say it”, and after all that, you genuinely do. You've got every tense of decir in front of you, an example for each, the distinction from hablar and contar, and the backstory behind its irregular shapes.
The fastest way to lock these in is to use them. Build a few of these forms into flashcards (we love Anki for exactly this), then start dropping dije, diré, and dime into real sentences out loud. While you're at it, you might pair this with our guides to ser vs estar and Spanish numbers to round out your foundations. If you'd like to hear decir used naturally by native speakers in context, SpanishPod101 is a great listening resource.
But the tables were only ever the warm-up. The whole point of learning digo, dijiste and dime is to actually tell someone something true, which is exactly what we get you doing from day one inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. So go and say something in Spanish. ¡Dilo!
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