Reported speech
We use reported speech to retell what someone said.
We have two ways to report:
1 - In the present tense:
Direct speech: I am hungry.
Reported speech: She says she is hungry. Here we report in the same tense, we change the pronoun “I” to “she” and “am” to “is”.
Notice : we can report the exact sentence of the speaker but we put it between quotation marks. She says” I am hungry”.
2 – In the past tense. In this case we go with the reported sentence one tense back. If the sentence is present we make it past and the simple past becomes past perfect.
Direct speech: I am hungry.
Reported speech: She said she was hungry.
And also we can say : She said:”I am hungry”.
We usually change :
The pronoun I to he or she
"Today" to "that day". “I am playing football today.” becomes: he said he was playing football that day.
"Tomorrow" to "the next day".
“I am playing football tomorrow.” becomes: he said he was playing football the next day.
"Here" becomes "there"
“I found the money here" becomes.” : He said he had found the money there. This time we changed the simple past to past perfect.
"Yesterday" becomes "the day before".
“I went to the cinema yesterday.” Becomes: She said she had gone to the cinema the day before.
So all close things go to be far.
When the direct sentence is imperative we use the infinitive:
“Come to me” becomes: He wanted me to come to him. Or he ordered me to come to him.
To be continued with reported questions
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Reported questions
We have two kinds of questions:
Wh-questions and yes/no questions
We start with wh-questions
When we report wh-questions we start the question with : He or she asked or wanted to know then if the auxiliary is do/does or did we drop it, other auxiliaries go after the subject like in the sentence and also we drop the question mark and put a full stop.
Direct question: where do you live?
Reported question: He asked me where I lived.
Yes/no questions
In this case we use “if” or “whether”
Direct question: Can you swim?
Reported question: He asked me if I could swim.
Notice
Do you know where the train station is?
The question mark here goes with “do you know” not with where the train station is.
Thank you
Majed
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