thoreau asked what is the use of house if you haven't got a plan to put it on using indirect speech
Answers
Indirect/Reported Speech refers to a dialogue being told to a third person/reporting what happened to a third person.
Example: Beaux said,"It's raining." (Direct)
Beaux said that it was raining. (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.
Thoreau asked,"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a plan to put it on?" (Direct)
Thoreau asked what the use of a house was if he hadn't got a plan to put that on. (Indirect)
Question:-
Change to Indirect Speech:
Thoreau asked, "What is the use of a house if you haven't got a plan to put it on?"
Answer:-
Thoreau asked what the use of a house was if he hadn't got a plan to put that on.
Here,
So, the sentence is 'Interrogative' that is why 'asked' would be used instead of 'said'.
'haven't' changed to 'hadn't' with the change in tense.
'you' changed to 'he' as it was meant for the listener.
The phrase 'put it on' changed to 'put that on'.
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.