You Can Quote Me on That

In this Topic, we're going to learn how to quote someone or something in Japanese. To do this, we can use the particle と or, for more casual speech, we can use って. This will allow us to start talking about what people have said or are thinking (and more!).

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と
Quotation
One of the regular functions of と in Japanese is as a quotation particle. This use is called 引用(いんよう) in Japanese, which basically translates as 'reference', or 'citation'. This way of using と can appear after almost any type of word (or phrase), but requires だ when used after nouns or な-Adjectives.
と as a quotation marker will almost always be followed by a verb that shows what type of 'quote' it is. This can be words like 言(い)う, 思(おも)う, 考(かんが)える, 聞(き)く, etc. However, at the end of a sentence, the verb will often be omitted.
As with other instances of the particle と being used, this use simply expresses the relationship between (A) 'what was communicated', and (B) 'how it was communicated'.
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って
Casual quotation
って is a casual variation of the と particle that is used for quoting something. This use is called 引用(いんよう) in Japanese, which basically translates to 'reference', or 'citation'. って is almost exclusively used after direct quotations, and will be followed by a verb indicating what type of communication was used. 言(い)った, 思(おも)った, 聞(き)いた, for example.
Just like with と, the verb that comes after って is frequently omitted. This is even more true for って, as many things are omitted in casual language.
Caution

Although often heard, due to って being very casual, it can be considered unnatural to use in sentences that also use the です or ます polite structures. However, if the conversation is formal but friendly (like between a senpai and a kouhai), most people would consider it normal.
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詳細

The idea of 'direct' quotation was mentioned on the grammar point pages, so let's explore what exactly that means and what consequences it has for how to use と and って.

Verbatim

A 'direct' quote is one which matches exactly what someone said. In writing, this will often be accompanied by Japanese quotation marks (「」). As it is literally what someone has said, there is no need to add anything grammatically if it wasn't there originally.

An 'indirect' quote is a more general summary or the gist of what someone said. In the case of indirect quotes, it is considered proper for the part before と to be a complete sentence in the standard form. This means that for nouns and な-Adjectives, we need to add だ to make it grammatically complete.

って-chnically Speaking...

The same way と has other uses (like 'and'), って has other jobs as well. It is used all the time in different casual Japanese structures, so be careful not to confuse a quote with these other meanings.

We'll learn more about these soon, but for now, let's just be aware that not every って is a quote!