Why future tense is used in this sentence?

Question

La sigues a la sala: Son los gatos —dirá Aura—. Hay tanto ratón en esta parte de la ciudad.

This sentence is from a novel. The book is told in 2nd person present tense, which is quite unusual. My question is why the future tense instead of the present tense is used here for "dicer".

Graccias,

Good question! :) - NikkiLR, Feb 16, 2012

Answer 1

It´s actually quite common to use future in place of conditional in both speaking and writing. Context tells us that it really means conditional tense when future tense is used, ie: "Dirás que soy impaciente, pero no es cierto" (You would say I am impacient, but it´s not true")

Thank you for confirming something I have believed for a while, Julian. When I used to write my sentences for Word of the Day while Heidi was admin here and Cogu or Vicente were correcting threads I would often think ''Surely I should use future here ... - FELIZ77, Feb 16, 2012

..instead of conditional.'' The sentence that I wanted to translate would be conditional in English but didn't seem to match how the Spanish use the conditional indicative - - FELIZ77, Feb 16, 2012

use of the conditional I mean :) - FELIZ77, Feb 16, 2012

Gracias. Very helpful. - JazSpanish, Feb 17, 2012

Answer 2

I never thought about it before! But here "dirá" means "Aura would say, Aura could say". (This is the narrator talking.). Very interesting!

Gracias, with your help, I was able to read the rest of the book, as such usage repeated many times in the book. - JazSpanish, Feb 17, 2012

Answer 3

I ran into this article today discussing specifically about this author's unique usage of tense and time in the book Aura.