reported speech-ingles

 Reported speech

direct speech is the exact words someone said.we use quotation marks in the direct speech.

Reported speech is the exact meaning of what someone said,but not the exact words.We do not use quotation marks in reported speech.The word that can either be used or omitted after the introductory verb(say,tell,etc)

how it works:

We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'.  If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

We don't need to change the tense, though probably we do need to change the 'person' from 'I' to 'she', for example. We also may need to change words like 'my' and 'your'.

(As I'm sure you know, often, we can choose if we want to use 'that' or not in English. I've put it in brackets () to show that it's optional. It's exactly the same if you use 'that' or if you don't use 'that'.)

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

Reported Questions

• Direct speech: "Where do you live?"

How can we make the reported speech here?

In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. A bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:

• Direct speech: "Where do you live?"
• Reported speech: She asked me where I lived.

Do you see how I made it? The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple. 

Another example:

• Direct speech: "where is Julie?"
• Reported speech: She asked me where Julie was.

The direct question is the present simple of 'be'. We make the question form of the present simple of be by inverting (changing the position of)the subject and verb. So, we need to change them back before putting the verb into the past simple.

Reported Requests

There's more! What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:

• Direct speech: "Close the window, please"
• Or: "Could you close the window please?"
• Or: "Would you mind closing the window please?"

All of these requests mean the same thing, so we don't need to report every word when we tell another person about it. We simply use 'ask me + to + infinitive':

• Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.

Reported Orders

And finally, how about if someone doesn't ask so politely? We can call this an 'order' in English, when someone tells you very directly to do something. For example:

• Direct speech: "Sit down!"

In fact, we make this into reported speech in the same way as a request. We just use 'tell' instead of 'ask':

• Reported speech: She told me to sit down.

Time Expressions with Reported Speech

Sometimes when we change direct speech into reported speech we have to change time expressions too. We don't always have to do this, however. It depends on when we heard the direct speech and when we say the reported speech.

For example:

It's Monday. Julie says "I'm leaving today".

If I tell someone on Monday, I say "Julie said she was leaving today".
If I tell someone on Tuesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving yesterday".
If I tell someone on Wednesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving on Monday".
If I tell someone a month later, I say "Julie said she was leaving that day".

So, there's no easy conversion. You really have to think about when the direct speech was said.