Reported speech

Question

Everyday I wake up and say "Today I will do something significant".
What will be the reported form of the above sentence ?
Everyday I wake up and say that today I will do something significant . ?
Do we have to change "today" ?

Avangi · Accepted Answer

Do we have to change "today" ?

I think so.

Every day I wake up and say that on this day I will do something significant.

Debpriya De · Answer

What about the sentence - Every Friday she says "My mother is ill today".
What will be the reported speech for this sentence ?
Do we have to write "on that day" instead of "on this day" ?

Cool Breeze · Answer

Debpriya DeEveryday I wake up and say "Today I will do something significant".
What will be the reported form of the above sentence ?

There's no such thing for your sentence. You don't seem to understand what reported speech really is. A minimum of three people (A, B and C) are involved. A says something to B and later B tells C what A has told him. Let's take an example.

Person A says the following sentence to person B on 7th May in the Dreamland restaurant in Stockholm:

"I will do something significant here tomorrow."

Person B meets person C on 12th May in Esplanade Park in Helsinki and tells person C what person A told him five days earlier. In all alnguages, the same changes have to be made, and they come naturally to anyone who has a good command of his native language. In this particular case, the words in bold have to be changed:

He said / He told me [that] he would do something significant there the next day.

Your original sentence contains a quotation ("Today I will do something significant.") but the subject is the same (I) as in the lead-in clause ("Every day I wake up and say,"). Changing that into reported speech is impossible.

It doesn't happen very often, but the change into reported speech is possible if the subjects are different. Person A says to person B:

"John's exact words were, 'I will do something significant today.'"

Person B says to person C a few days later:

He said / He told me that John's exact words were/had been "I will do something significant today."

It's a good idea to leave the exact words unchanged, otherwise they are not John's exact words. However, instead of 100 percent accuracy, many people would make the changes that reported speech seems to require:

He said to me / He told me that John's exact words were/had been that he would do something significant [on] that day.

The above sentence is of course in keeping with the usual changes but even though it proclaims to state John's exact words, it doesn't actually do that.

CB

Avangi · Answer

Hmmm. I said to you, "I don't want to hear any more about this."
I told you I didn't want to hear any more about this.

Every day I wake up and say to my mother, "Today I shall do something significant."
Every day I wake up and tell my mother that on this day I shall do something significant.

I suppose it's possible to define "reported speech" in such a way as to exclude the above, but then what shall we call the above?

Why should it be impossible to report your own speech?

I said to him yesterday, "Get lost!"
I told him yesterday that he should get lost.
I told him yesterday to get lost.

I heard her say do him, "Why don't you get lost?"
I heard her ask him why he doesn't / didn't get lost.

Best regards, - A.

Cool Breeze · Answer

AvangiWhy should it be impossible to report your own speech?

Hi A (or B, as you often call yourself!

)

It isn't of course impossible if you just use a that clause instead of a verbatim quote and only two people are involved. In your every-day example the two people are "I" and "my mother". My apologies that I overlooked that option and headed for murkier waters straight away. I suppose that I didn't really consider just using a that clause instead of a quotation really reported speech since in such cases the same two people are involved in both cases and no one is really reporting anything to anybody. That's how I see it anyway.

No doubt these two-people cases are dealt with in grammar books, I believe. I have always wondered why people have problems with reported or indirect speech. The same "rules" applly in all languages and come naturally to anyone who has a good command of his native language -- or a foreign language. Even in Finnish I would have to make the same changes even though English and Finnish aren't even remotely related!

CB

Avangi · Answer

Thanks, CB.
I've often been irritated by the seemingly arbitrary rules of reported speech.

It sometimes seems like the ESL community is quite arbitrary in what they decide to be arbitrary about.

In other cases, they happily announce that there are many ways to look at a thing.

Cool Breeze · Answer

AvangiIt sometimes seems like the ESL community is quite arbitrary in what they decide to be arbitrary about.

This will keep me chuckling for a while!

CB

Reported speech

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