Reported speech is also known as Indirect speech.
When do we use it? Sometimes someone says a sentence, for example "I'm going to the cinema tonight". Later, maybe we want to tell someone else what the first person said.
In reported speech the tenses, word-order and pronouns may be different from those in the original sentence.It isn’t always necessary to change the tense. If something is still true now – he still works in Italy – we can use the present simple in the reported sentence.
Distinction must be made between direct speech and reported speech.
Direct speech | Reported speech |
---|---|
She says: "I like tuna fish." | She says that she likes tuna fish. |
She said: "I'm visiting Paris next weekend" | She said that she was visiting Paris the following weekend |