Look at these examples to see how we can tell someone what another person asked.
direct speech: 'Do you work from home?' he said.
indirect speech: He asked me if I worked from home.
direct speech: 'Who did you see?' she asked.
indirect speech: She asked me who I'd seen.
direct speech: 'Could you write that down for me?' she asked.
indirect speech: She asked me to write it down.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Read the explanation to learn more.
Grammar explanation
A reported question is when we tell someone what another person asked. To do this, we can use direct speech or indirect speech.
direct speech: 'Do you like working in sales?' he asked.
indirect speech: He asked me if I liked working in sales.
In indirect speech, we change the question structure (e.g. Do you like) to a statement structure (e.g. I like).
We also often make changes to the tenses and other words in the same way as for reported statements (e.g. have done → had done, today → that day). You can learn about these changes on the Reported speech 1 – statements page.
Yes/no questions
In yes/no questions, we use if or whether to report the question. If is more common.
'Are you going to the Helsinki conference?''Have you finished the project yet?'
- He asked me if I was going to the Helsinki conference.
- She asked us whether we'd finished the project yet.
Questions with a question word
In what, where, why, who, when or how questions, we use the question word to report the question.
'What time does the train leave?''Where did he go?'
- He asked me what time the train left.
- She asked where he went.
Reporting verbs
The most common reporting verb for questions is ask, but we can also use verbs like enquire, want to know or wonder.
'Did you bring your passports?''When could you get this done by?'
- She wanted to know if they'd brought their passports.
- He wondered when we could get it done by.
Offers, requests and suggestions
If the question is making an offer, request or suggestion, we can use a specific verb pattern instead, for example offer + infinitive, ask + infinitive or suggest + ing.
'Would you like me to help you?''Can you hold this for me, please?'
- He offered to help me.
'Why don't we check with Joel?'
- She asked me to hold it.
- She suggested checking with Joel.
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
Hello, I was wondering if a sentence contains words like Yes, or No, how would we change the narration. For example:
The man said, "No, I refuse to surrender my rights".
Can it be changed as
The man refused to surrender his rights.
Or
The man said that he refused to surrender his rights.
Or
The man informed in negation and said that he refused to surrender his rights.
Or guide if there is any other way to change its narration.
Also, of a sentence contains yes, e.g.
He said, "Yes, I admit my mistake"
What word would substitute yes here.
Thank you so much for providing this platform!!
Hello Ayesha27,
There are often multiple ways of reporting speech - English is quite flexible in this regard.
Yes, that's fine.
That's also fine.
This is is not possible. 'Informed in negation' is not a phrase we use.
You can use a verb like 'agreed that' or 'accepted that' to show that the man is responding to a question or statement. You could also use something like 'it is/was true that':
The man said that it was true that he had made a mistake.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello!
I was wondering if it is okay to use both options in the following sentence:
I hope I am not burdening you with it,
Thank you for your reply in advance
Best regards!
Hello Anastasiaaaa,
Yes, both of those are correct. Well done!
A lot of reporting verbs, like 'ask' have patterns like this. You can read more about it here:
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/c1-grammar/patterns-reporting-verbs
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi
Can you tell me which one is correct?
he asked me if was i going to the conference
he asked me what time left the train
he asked me if i wanted him to come to the party
he asked me why is she travelling to tanta
Hi par_iss89,
The third sentence is grammatically correct; the others all contain errors in word order.
Please note that generally we do not answer questions like this as we are not a service for providing answers to tasks from elsewhere. We would end up doing people's tests and homework for them if so! Our main role is providing explanations as to why something is correct or not rather than answers to tasks.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello! :)
I have a question concerning reported questions. I have trouble understanding how to change the auxiliary verb "do" in questions.
For example:
In this case, the "did give" in the direct speech makes the backshift from simple past to past perfect (had given). In my grammar book at school, it says that we should omit do/did/does when reporting questions. I thought the indirect speech of the sentence was "He asked his parents if they gave Aunt Sadia his flight details" because I omitted the "did" as it was explained in my book to do so. Now there's another question:
I don't quite understand why I can omit the "do" in the indirect speech in this case and only make the backshift of the tense for "need" (--> "needed"). Why can't I say "He asked his parents if he did need a large suitcase?".
Hello AGermanGirlLearningEnglish,
I think your question is not really about omitting 'did'. Let me explain.
When we report questions we do not use the question structure. For example:
Here, the original sentence is a question and uses inversion: the verb (is) comes before the subject (he). In the reported question we simply use the structure for a regular sentence: the verb (is) comes after the subject (he). Notice that backshifting is not necessary when the situation is still the same. In other words, if she is still wondering where he is then we can leave the sentence in the present. Another example of reported speech should make this clear:
When we report a question we use the same question word (where, when, who etc) as in the original/direct speech sentence. When the question is a yes/no question we use 'if'. So, in your example we use 'if' and then regular sentence structure
You can use 'gave' here instead of 'had given' if the situation is still unchanged. Since (from the context) it seems clear that this is the case, 'gave' should be fine here.
Your second example works the same way:
'Did' is not needed as we use a regular sentence structure. You could use a present form ('needs') if the trip has not happened yet, but backshifting is fine here in either case.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Does the direct speech "when does the train left?"i asked can be chaged into ' I asked when does the train left?'
Hello rojina-bogati,
First of all, there is an error in the direct speech example. You have mixed present and past forms. The question should be one of these:
When we report a question we don't need to use inversion, so the reported question would be as follows:
Note that there is no question mark (?) here as it is not a question.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team