they said "we have been working for two hours (narration)
Answers
Indirect/Reported Speech refers to a dialogue being told to a third person/reporting what happened to a third person.
Example: She said,"Do you have a pen?"(Direct)
She asked if I had a pen. (Indirect)
In the above example, when writing in indirect/reported form, the sentence changes according to its tense. Also, modifications regarding certain words like 'this' changes to 'that', 'tomorrow' changes to 'the next day', 'will' changes to 'would', 'can' changes to 'could' and many other words have to be made. Also, if the sentence is contains an interrogation, then 'said' changes to 'asked'. Punctuation marks other than a full stop (.) cannot be used in indirect/reported speech.
They said,"We have been working for two hours." (Direct)
They said that they had been working for two hours. (Indirect)
Question:-
Change to Indirect Speech:
They said, "We have been working for two hours."
Answer:-
They said that they had been working for two hours.
Here,
So, 'that' has been added after 'said'.
'have' changed to 'had' with the change in tense.
'we' changed to 'they' as it was meant for the listener.
What is Direct/Indirect Speech ?
Direct Speech: It involves writing the actual words of the speaker within Inverted Commas.
Indirect Speech: It involves changing the words of the speaker by changing the tense to narrate to the some other person.