direct and indirect speech

1. Direct Speech 
Saying exactly what someone has said is called direct speech, sometimes called quoted speech. Here what a person says appears within quotation marks ("...") and should be word for word.

2. Indirect Speech 

Indirect speech (reported speech), doesn't use quotation marks to enclose what the person said and it doesn't have to be word for word.

When reporting speech the tense usually changes. This is because when we use reported speech, we are usually talking about a time in the past, because obviously the person who spoke originally spoke in the past. The verbs therefore usually have to be in the past too.

Example :

• Direct: Budi said, “I am very busy now.” 
• Indirect: Budi said that he was very busy then.

• Direct : She said, “ my Father is writing letter.” 
• Indirect: She said that her Father was writing letter. 

It will be noticed that in Direct Speech, we use inverted commas to mark off the exact words of the speaker. In Indirect Speech we do not use the inverted commas. 

It will be further noticed that in changing the above Direct Speech into Indirect speech, certain changes have been made. 

Thus: 
i. We have used the conjunction ‘that’ before the Indirect Statement. 

ii. The pronoun “I” is changed to “HE”. (The Pronoun is changed in Person) 

iii. The verb “am” is changed to “was”. 

iv. The adverb “now” is changed to “then”. 

Rules for changing Direct into Indirect Speech: 

 When the reporting or principal verb is in the Past Tense, all the Present Tenses in the Direct Speech are changed into Past Tense. 

1.     A simple present tense becomes simple past tense.

Example :

·         She said, “its cold.”

·         She said it was cold.

2.    A present continuous tense becomes a past continuous.

Example :

·         She said, “i’m teaching english.”

·         She said she was teaching english

3.    A present perfect becomes a past perfect.

Example :

·         She said, “I’ve been on the web since 1999.”

·         She said she had been on the web since 1999.

4.    simple past tense becomes the past perfect tense. 

Example :

·         She said, “I taught online yesterday.”

·         She said she had taught online yesterday.

5.    Past continuous become past perfect contonuous

Example :

·         She said, “I was teaching earlier.”

·         She said she had been teaching earlier.

6.    Past perfect become past perfect.

Example :

·         She said, “the lesson had already started when he arrived.

·         She said the lesson had already started when he arrived.

7.    Past perfect continuous become past perfect continuous.

Example :

·         She said, “I’d already been teaching for five minutes.”

·         She said she’d already been teaching for five minutes.

Modal verb forms also sometimes change:

The shall of the future is changed into should. 

Example :

·         She said, “what shall we learn today?”

·         She asked what we should learn today.

The will of the future is changed into would. 

Example :

·         She said, “I will teach english tomorrow”

·         She said would teach english tomorrow.

The can and may of the future are changed into could and might respectively. 

Example :

·         She said, “I can teach english”

·         She said she could teach english.

·         She said,”May i open a new browser?”

·         She asked if she might open a new browser.