Question

Direct speech into indirect speech

Answer 1

★For example:

Suppose your friend told you that you have a good handwriting. You want to convey this to your parents.You can do it in either of these two ways :-

• My friend said to me, "You have a good handwriting. (Direct speech)
• My friend told me that I had a good handwriting.(indirect speech)

★Related information:-

• The exact words of the speaker, written within Quotation marks or Inverted commas (“ ”) is called Reported speech.
• The verb that introduces the Reported speech is called a Reporting verb.

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★How the tense changed?

Present Simple → Past Simple

Present Continuous → Past Continuous

Present Perfect → Past Perfect

Present Perfect Continuous → Past Perfect Continuous

Past Simple → Past Perfect

Past Continuous → Past Perfect Continuous

Past Perfect → No change

Past Perfect Continuous → No change

★Additional information:

There are two ways of reporting what someone has spoken:-

• When the exact words spoken by a person are used , it is called direct speech.

• When the words spoken by a person are put in our own words , it is called indirect speech.

★ Rules for the Change of Tenses

• Rule 1:

If the Reporting Verb is in the Present or Future Tense, the Tense of the Verb in the Reported Speech remains unchanged.

Direct: Mona says, "lla will meet me on Monday." (Simple Present)

Indirect: Mona says that lla will meet her on Monday. (unchanged)

• Rule 2:

If the Reporting Verb is in the Past Tense, the Tenses in the Reported Speech are changed into corresponding Past Tense.

To work out this rule smoothly, note the following special rules:

• The Simple Present is changed into the Simple Past. (do → did)

Direct: Anil said, "Sunil goes for a walk daily."

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀(Past) (Simple Present)

Indirect: Anil said that Sunil went for a walk daily.

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀(Simple Past)

• Rule 3: (Exception to Rule 2):

If the Reported speech expresses a universal truth or a habitual fact, its Tense remains unchanged.

Direct: The teacher said, “The moon revolves round the earth.

(The Reported Speech is a universal truth.)

Indirect: The teacher said that the moon revolves round the earth. (unchanged)

Answer 2

Direct and Indirect Speech:

We may report the words of a speaker in two ways :

(i) We may quote his actual words.

(ii)We may report what he said without quoting his exact words.This is called Indirect (or Reported) Speech.

Example :

Direct Speech : Rama said, ' I am very busy now'

Indirect Speech : Rama said that he was very busy then

It will be noticed that in direct speech, we use inverted commas to mark off the exact words of the speaker. In indirect speech we do not.

It will be further noticed that in changing the a ove direct speech into indirect certain changes have been made. Thus :

• We have used the conjunction that before the indirect statement.
• The pronoun I is changed to he. (The pronoun is changed in person.)
• The verb am is changed to was. (Present tense is changed to past.)
• The adverb now is changed to then.