Reported Speech, Part 2. In part one of this lesson, you learned that when the reporting verb is in the past, the verb tense in the noun clause will also be in some form of the past. We could say that the verb will take a step back in the verb tense. For example, imagine that you are a student, and your friend says he won't be in class that day. He asks you to pay attention to everything that the teacher says so that you can later report it to him. Imagine she says, tomorrow's test will be hard. Later, your friend asks what did she say? You'll report to him, she said tomorrow's test would be hard. Will was in original quoted statement but in the noun clause when we put it into reported speech it becomes would. This will apply to most cases of reported speech when the reporting verb appears in the past tense. However, there is a little exception. When reporting what someone has said immediately, and especially in casual informal speech, the verb in the quoted speech may not change in the reported speech. For example, right now, I'm talking on the phone to Jake who happens to be traveling around the world. Listen how I report what she says immediately. It's Jake. She said she's having so much fun in Spain. Really? She also said she really misses teaching grammar. In the original statement, the verb appears in a simple present. And in the reported speech, you can see it is also in a simple present, even though the reporting verb, said, is in the past. This is one exception to the rule you learned in the first part of this lesson. Another exception involves unchanging facts, or truths, that are accepted by everyone. For example, if Jake tells me Spain is a country in Europe, I'll report, she said that Spain is a country in Europe. Notice that even though the reporting verb is in the past, the verb tense does not change in the noun clause because this is a fact. What happens if the reporting verb is not in the past? Let's take a look at an example. Jake tells me nearly every day just how much she loves grammar. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. She always says that she loves grammar. Basically, she declares her love for grammar every day. I can say, she always says that she loves grammar. Can you tell me what tense the reporting verb appears in? It's not past, it's the simple present, because she says this every day. That means that the verb tense in the noun clause will not change, it will remain in the simple present. This is true when the reporting verb is in another tense other than the past tense. Can you tell me what verb tense the reporting verb appears in? It's future. Again, we do not change the verb tense in the noun clause. It remains what it was in the direct quote. There is one more important thing that I should mention. When we report what someone has said, we often use the words tell and say. However, they are used a little bit differently. Let me show you what I mean. Your mother told me a funny story about you. Tell is often followed by an indirect object pronoun, like me, you, her, him, them. However, take a look at the example with say. Your mother said that you used to pretend a broomstick was a horse and that you would ride all around the house. Notice that there is no indirect object after said. This is one major difference between tell and say. I should mention, however, that it is possible to say, to me or to her or to them after the verb say. However, this is not common or very natural for a native speaker of English. How can we avoid some common mistakes when using reported speech? This statement is wrong. Based on the rule that I just told you about, how can we fix the statement? That's right, it needs an interact object pronoun because you see the verb tell. Greg told us that he'd done a banana peep. Now, it's correct. This is a similar mistake. That's right, we need to take out the indirect object pronoun here. Greg said that it hurt. Other common mistakes may be related to collocation errors. That is, there are some objects that always follow, tell, not, say. For example, this is wrong. It should be, Jan told a lie, told the truth, told a secret, or told a story. We can never use, say, with these types of expressions. That concludes Part 2 of Reported Speech. I hope you learned a lot! See you soon.
