Reported Speech: Statements

Why This Matters

Think about how you talk every single day. A friend tells you something, and then you tell someone else what your friend said. “Mom, Riya said she can’t come to the party.” You do this many times a day, without even thinking.

Notice what you did there. Riya’s own words were probably “I can’t come to the party.” But you did not repeat her exact words. You changed them. “I” became “she”. “can’t” became “can’t”… and the whole sentence became your report of what she said.

This is reported speech, and you already use it all the time. The only problem is that in an exam, you have to do it by clear rules — and small slips (wrong tense, wrong pronoun, wrong “now/then”) lose easy marks. This unit goes with the lesson The Sermon at Benares, where the Buddha gently tells a grieving woman a hard truth. Reporting what someone said — calmly and correctly — is a real-life skill, not just a grammar exercise. Let’s learn to do it right, and understand why each rule is what it is.

The Big Idea

Reported speech means telling what someone said in our own words, not their exact words. We do not copy the speaker’s sentence inside quotation marks. Instead we slide it into our own sentence — and because we are usually speaking later, the tense, the pronouns, and the time-and-place words all shift to match our new point of view.

Before we go further, let’s pin down two terms you will see in every question on this topic. Getting these clear now makes everything below easy.

Here is the whole process on one sentence, so you can see the big picture before we slow down on each part. Figure 8.1 shows the four changes that happen together.

Tap to zoom

Don’t worry about memorising this yet. We will take each of the four changes one at a time.

Let’s Break It Down

Direct vs indirect — what changes

When we move from direct to reported speech, four things can change. Keep this checklist in your head; the rest of the unit just explains each one.

1. The quotation marks (” ”) are removed.
2. The word that is usually added to join the two parts.
3. The tense of the verb often shifts one step into the past (the “backshift”).
4. The pronouns and the time/place words change to match the new speaker and moment.

Let’s compare the two side by side so the pattern is obvious before we dig into the why.

What to look at	Direct speech	Reported speech
Quotation marks	Yes — "..."	No
Joining word	A comma after said	the word 'that'
The verb tense	I am happy (present)	he was happy (past)
The pronoun	I, my, we	he/she, his/her, they
Time word	now, today	then, that day

The reporting verb: said / said to → told

Every reported sentence has a reporting verb — the verb that tells us someone spoke. The two most common ones are said and told. There is one simple rule for choosing between them.

The other job of this step is to remove the inverted commas and add that. After the reporting verb, we drop the comma and the ” ”, and join the two parts with that.

Let’s see all of this on one example — choosing the verb, dropping the quotes, adding that.

Why tenses “backshift” one step into the past

This is the part students find strangest, so let’s understand why it happens — not just memorise it. When you report what someone said, you are almost always speaking later than they did. Their words have already been spoken. That moment is over.

So a sentence that was in the present for them is now in the past for you. “I am hungry” was true at the moment Asha spoke. By the time you report it, that moment has passed — so you say she was hungry. The tense steps back because time has moved on. Figure 8.2 shows this on a timeline.

Tap to zoom

So the backshift is not a random rule. It is just honesty about time: the speaking moment is in the past now, so the verb follows.

The tense backshift table

Now the practical part: exactly which tense becomes which. The pattern is always the same — each tense steps one rung back into the past. Figure 8.3 is your full reference ladder; keep it handy.

Tap to zoom

Here is the same information as a table you can revise from quickly.

Tense name	Direct speech	Reported speech
Present simple	"I play"	he played
Present continuous	"I am playing"	he was playing
Present perfect	"I have played"	he had played
Past simple	"I played"	he had played
Future (will)	"I will play"	he would play
can / may / must	"I can play"	he could play

There is one helpful exception worth knowing. If the sentence states a universal truth — something always true, like “The sun rises in the east” — we usually keep the present tense even in reported speech: The teacher said that the sun rises in the east. It would sound odd to put a permanent fact into the past.

Let’s apply the ladder to a present-continuous sentence.

Changing pronouns to match the new speaker

Why must the pronouns change at all? Because the person speaking has changed. When Rohan says “I lost my pen,” the “I” is Rohan. But when you report it later, you are not Rohan — so if you keep saying “I”, it sounds like you lost the pen. To keep it clear who did what, Rohan’s “I” must become “he”. Figure 8.4 shows exactly this.

Tap to zoom

The simple rule: change each pronoun to match who it really points to from the reporter’s side. A handy guide:

• First person (I, me, my, we, our) → matches the speaker, so it becomes he/she/his/her or they/their.
• Second person (you, your) → matches the listener the speaker was talking to.
• Third person (he, she, it, they) → usually stays the same (it already points to someone else).

Let’s see a sentence where both a first-person and a second-person pronoun change.

Changing time and place words

The last group of changes is about when and where. If a friend told you on Monday, “I will meet you here tomorrow,” and you report it on Wednesday, the word “tomorrow” no longer means Wednesday — and “here” may be a different place now. The speaker’s now, today, and here are no longer yours. So these words shift to point back to the original moment and place. Figure 8.5 is your swap card.

Tap to zoom

The reason is the same as the backshift: the report happens at a different time and place, so words tied to “right here, right now” must be pointed back to the original.

Let’s combine a tense backshift, a pronoun change, and a time-word change in one sentence.

Common Mistakes

These are the exact slips that cost marks in reported-speech questions. Read each one carefully — knowing the trap is half the cure.

The biggest one is simply forgetting to move the tense back.

The second trap is keeping the speaker’s own pronoun.

A third common slip is using “told” with no person, or “said” with a person.

Finally, students often forget the time and place words.

Quick Check

Test yourself on the four changes before moving to practice. Pick the best reported form for each.

Practice Problems

Try each one yourself first — write the full reported sentence — then reveal the model answer and check every change (verb, tense, said/told, pronoun, time/place word).

Easy

Medium

Challenge

Summary

You should now be able to explain and do each of these:

• Reported (indirect) speech retells what someone said in our own words, with no inverted commas — unlike direct speech, which keeps the exact words inside ” ”.
• To report a statement: drop the quotation marks, and join the two parts with that.
• Use said when no person follows the reporting verb; use told when a person follows it (and change “said to” → “told”).
• Backshift the tense one step into the past — because we report later, the speaker’s present has become our past (present→past, present continuous→past continuous, present perfect / past simple→past perfect, will→would, can→could, may→might).
• Change the pronouns to match who is really speaking now: the speaker’s “I/my” → “he/his” or “she/her”.
• Change the time and place words: now→then, today→that day, tomorrow→the next day, yesterday→the day before, here→there, this→that, these→those.
• Keep the present tense for a universal truth (“the sun rises in the east”).

What’s Next

You have learned to report statements — sentences that simply tell us something. But people don’t only make statements. They also ask questions (“Where do you live?”) and give commands or requests (“Close the door,” “Please help me”).

In Unit 9: Reported Speech — Questions and Commands, you’ll see that questions and commands follow the same backshift and pronoun rules you just learned — but with two new twists: questions use a different joining word (if / whether, or the question word) and lose their question mark, while commands use a reporting verb like told / asked / requested plus to + verb. The foundation you built here carries straight over. Master statements first, and the rest will feel easy.