hi everyone i'm arnell and today we're going to look at reported speech also called indirect speech same thing if we really want to understand this grammar we need to look at direct speech back shifting reporting verbs modal verbs reported questions and reported commands i know it looks like a lot of information but we will do everything step by step let's start with direct speech i love your earrings the exact words someone uses is called direct speech in writing you can recognize direct speech because of the quotation marks quotation marks are the those little lines around
a word or a sentence mini note when it comes to american punctuation generally the double quotation marks are preferred with british punctuation normally you'll see the single quotation marks but obviously in spoken english that doesn't matter and the grammar is the same amy said i love your earrings amy said that she loved my earrings when we report speech we are summarizing what someone said to us and you can see i've changed a few things present simple becomes past simple and i've changed the pronouns i and your becomes she and my because i'm speaking from a
different perspective and yes that is optional you don't have to say it changing the tense from present simple to past simple is what we call back shifting back shifting is just a very fancy way of saying going back one tense why why do we backshift why do we go back one tenth it actually makes sense let's do another example i'll use a timeline imagine now someone says i forgot to do my homework he uses the past simple we can see here now the present has become the past robin told the teacher that he had forgotten
to do his homework you can see i change the past simple to the past perfect and i've changed the pronouns i and my becomes he and his pretty logical right when we report speech we also need a reporting verb a reporting verb like say or tell say or tell is there a difference there are lots of reporting verbs in english for example agree complain mention etc but say and tell are the most common and in today's lesson i'm sticking with these they are both irregular verbs say said said remember the pronunciation is said not said
tell told told with direct speech use say she said good morning no you can't he said they told you're welcome no but when we report speech both verbs are fine why aren't you going out with us tonight i already said i was sick i already told you i was sick both of these verbs mean the same thing and you can see even though i'm still sick now i've used the past simple because i'm reporting what i said earlier here i don't need to change the pronouns because i'm reporting my own words told you told you
told you when we use tell we must give the person we are speaking to i told you that i was sick i told him that i was sick i told my dog that i was sick i told the whole world that i was sick we do not do this we say i said you that i was sick no so using tell can give you a bit more information but say to someone is correct martha said to me that she was going to be 20 minutes late okay so let's keep going let's continue with this whole
backshifting business we know in english there are 12 basic tenses i have my present tenses my past tenses and my future tenses brain please don't cry if you don't know how to use all of these tenses in today's lesson it does not matter we are just looking at back shifting so don't worry the present tenses when we report them become the past tenses so that's kind of an easy pattern to remember present simple past simple present continuous past continuous etc with the past tenses you can see past perfect and past perfect continuous remain the same
why because you can't really backshift you can't go further back than the past perfect future tenses all of the future tenses have the verb will in them what's the past of will would so we need to change that will to wood for example future continuous will be sleeping he told me that he would be sleeping okay i will put this list in the description below let's keep going with a few more examples how's gloria doing is she out of the hospital yet i haven't heard from gloria in weeks i assume she's out of the hospital
ren told me that she hadn't heard from gloria in weeks i have my reporting verb i've backshifted present perfect becomes past perfect and i've changed the pronouns i'm staying here for two nights sean said that he was staying there for two nights you can see my changes i've used my reporting verb said present continuous becomes past continuous and i've changed the pronouns you can also see in this example i've also changed the adverb because sean's here is my there so keep in mind that sometimes you you also need to change the adverbs or the location
for example this becomes that okay let's look at a question one of you asked me last year i made a video called close phrasal verbs if you want you can watch it here at one point in the lesson i use reported speech i say the teacher said we had to dress up tonight that's right dress up means to wear very formal clothes and to look nice and i got this comment my question is earlier in the video you used this sentence the teacher said we had to dress up tonight why did you use had to
and tonight in the same sentence a bit confusing right past simple plus tonight that's the future it's all because of reported speech imagine the event is in the future tonight earlier the teacher said with direct speech you have to dress up tonight i report this later the teacher said that we had to dress up tonight so we have that kind of weird combination of past simple and the future i live in the uk she said that she lives in the uk what do you notice you can see here i haven't changed the tense present simple
present simple is that correct absolutely normally we don't change the tense if the information is still true today so in this case she she lives in the uk now she told me she said she lives in the uk we don't need to change anything we also don't need to change the tents if something hasn't happened yet next week i'm flying to canada to visit my sister he told me that he is flying to canada to visit his sister present continuous present continuous because this hasn't happened yet yes if you wanted to backshift that would be
perfectly okay she said she lived in the uk he told me that he was flying to canada both would be fine as you can see normally when we report speech we use the simple past i said she said he told they told etc but what happens if someone says something repeatedly it's kind of normal for them to say this you could actually just use the present simple and remember the pronunciation here is say but this is says say says say says i love you i love you i love you he says he loves me he
says he loves me but he never calls me okay so far we've looked at direct speech say and tell backshifting the 12 tenses and when you don't need to change anything let's keep going okay here i have a list of very special verbs these verbs are called modal verbs and yes when we report modal verbs we do need to change some of them [Music] i know it's a lot of information and if you've made it this far you are doing a really good job it's not not easy grammar let's take a look at changing modal
verbs will becomes would can could may might possibility may could permission must had to obligation must stays the same must speculation these modal verbs stay the same i will definitely attend your wedding my 90 year old grandma said that she would definitely attend our wedding cantu could i can't swim he told me he couldn't swim may possibility we may increase our prices in january the store owner said that they might increase their prices in january may permission yes you may use your phones in class the professor said we could use our phones in class must
you must pay for parking the man said that we had to pay for parking karen isn't back from the store yet she must be stuck in traffic he said that she must be stuck in traffic so these verbs remain the same you should check out that new greek restaurant pete said that we should check out that new greek restaurant right we have two more things to do reported questions and reported commands so we're almost done let's start with yes no questions what is a yes no question are you a student at this university you have
two possibilities yes or no that is a yes no question when we report questions the back shifting the changing of pronouns remains the same but of course the grammatical structure is a little bit different that lady asked me if i was a student at this university that lady asked me whether i was a student at this university my reporting verb is ask because it's a question the person is optional you don't have to include it if weather subject verb if or whether they're the same thing generally if is more common common mistake that lady asked
me if was i a student at this university remember an indirect question a reported question is not a real question so you do not need to change the subject and verb and you do not need a question mark do you like red wine the waiter asked my friend if whether she liked red wine ask my friend if whether subject verb okay let's move on what about other questions like wh questions by wh questions i mean who what when where why how where do you live why can't you work on mondays who will be at your
party she asked me where i lived once again we do not say she asked me where do you live and because it's not a real question we can drop that auxiliary ask question word subject verb my boss asked me why i couldn't work on mondays reporting verb question word subject verb she asked me who would be at my party reporting verb question word here where is the subject in this case the subject is who so i do have my subject and verb sit down be quiet do your homework and don't look at your phone these
are called imperatives imperatives are commands they tell someone what to do come here close the window so these are things i would someone would say to their child and when we report imperatives we change that grammar again there's another structure we normally use tell tell the person plus the infinitive to base verb my mom told me to sit down she told me to be quiet she told me to do my homework she told me not to look at my phone okay i'm going to end this lesson with two imperatives subscribe to my channel and leave
me a comment below i really hope this lesson helped you with reported speech and i can't wait to see you soon thank you very much bye
