Reported speech ( reported statements, reported questions, time expressions...)

Reported speech: 

Reported Speech also called Indirect Speech or indirect discourse , is a means of expressing the content of statements, questions or other utterances, without quoting them explicitly as is done in direct speech.It is used to communicate what someone else said,think or believe but without using the exact words. A few changes are necessary; often a pronoun has to be changed and the verb is usually moved back a tense, where possible.

For example, He said "I'm coming" is direct speech, whereas He said he was coming is indirect speech.

Reported speech is usually used to talk about the past, so we normally change the tense of the words spoken. We use reporting verbs like “say“,“tell“, “ask“, and we may use the word “that” to introduce the reported words. Reported speech doesn’t use quotation marks to enclose what the person said.
For example:

Direct speech:
• - “I’m going to the English course”, he said.

Reported speech:
• - He said that he was going to the English course.

When reporting questions, it is especially important to pay attention to sentence order. When reporting yes/ no questions connect the reported question using “if”. When reporting questions using question words (why, where, when, etc.) use the question word.

• He asked, “Do you want to come with me to Ireland?”
• * He asked me if I wanted to come with him to Ireland.
• Peter asked, “Where did you go last summer?”
• * Dave asked me where I had gone the previous summer.

Reported statements:

The tenses generally move backwards in this way(Backshift of tenses)

from	to
Simple Present	Simple Past
Simple Past	Past Perfect
Present Perfect
Past Perfect
will	would
Progressive forms
am/are/is	was/were
was/were	had been
has been
had been

Tense	Direct Speech	Reported Speech
present simple	“I like ice cream”	She said (that) she liked ice cream.
present continuous	“I am living in London”	She said she was living in London.
past simple	“I bought a car”	She said she had bought a car OR She said she bought a car.
past continuous	“I was walking along the street”	She said she had been walking along the street.
present perfect	“I haven’t seen Julie”	She said she hadn’t seen Julie.
past perfect*	“I had taken English lessons before”	She said she had taken English lessons before.
will	“I’ll see you later”	She said she would see me later.
would*	“I would help, but..”	She said she would help but...
can	“I can speak perfect English”	She said she could speak perfect English.
could*	“I could swim when I was four”	She said she could swim when she was four.
shall	“I shall come later”	She said she would come later.
should*	“I should call my mother”	She said she should call her mother
might*	"I might be late"	She said she might be late
must	"I must study at the weekend"	She said she must study at the weekend OR She said she had to study at the weekend

* doesn’t change

Occasionally, we don’t need to change the present tense into the past if the information in direct speech is still true (but this is only for things which are general facts, and even then usually we like to change the tense):

• Direct speech: “The sky is blue”
• Reported speech: She said that the skyis/was blue

Reported questions:

So now you have no problem with making reported speech from positive and negative sentences. But how about 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. Confusing? Sorry, 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.

Here are some more examples:

Direct Question	Reported Question
“Where is the Post Office, please?”	She asked me where the Post Office was.
“What are you doing?”	She asked me what I was doing.
“Who was that fantastic man?”	She asked me who that fantastic man had been.

So much for 'wh' questions. But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':

• Direct speech: "Do you like chocolate?"
• Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

No problem? Here are a few more examples:

Direct Question	Reported Question
“Do you love me?”	He asked me if I loved him.
“Have you ever been to Mexico?”	She asked me if I had ever been to Mexico.
“Are you living here?”	She asked me if I was living here.

Reported orders: 

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.

Direct Order	Reported Order
“Go to bed!”	He told the child to go to bed.
“Don’t worry!”	He told her not to worry.
“Be on time!”	He told me to be on time.
“Don’t smoke!”	He told us not to smoke.

Time expressions:

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.

Here's a table of some possible conversions:

now	then / at that time
today	yesterday / that day / Tuesday / the 27th of June
yesterday	the day before yesterday / the day before / Wednesday / the 5th of December
last night	the night before, Thursday night
last week	the week before / the previous week
tomorrow	today / the next day / the following day / Friday

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