Reported Speech

An area of English that seems technical is indirect or reported speech.  But once you have understood the basic principles, it becomes a lot easier.

Example:
Imagine a teacher that says, "I'm so happy today."

If you are telling a friend about this the next day, how would you explain it to him/her?

You would have to think about a few things:
The teacher said it yesterday (in the past).
The teacher was happy yesterday, maybe he/she isn't happy today.
You are not the teacher.  The teacher is a he/she.

So you could directly quote the teacher, maybe imitating his/her voice and say:

Yesterday, my teacher said: "I'm so happy today".

You have used the past simple to show that it happened in the past.  But it would be much more natural to say:

Yesterday, my teacher said that he was so happy that day.

What did we have to change?
We added "that" - this is very common in reported speech.
We changed "I" to "he".
We changed "today" to "that day".

So here we have some basic principles of reported speech:
Move back in time (if the speech happened in the past)
Change personal pronouns.
Change time expressions.

Use the link to look at some more examples and rules.



Good summary of reported speech rules

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