Indirect speech

Ahmeeeeeeeeeed · December 21, 2010, 12:25pm

hello

some questions about indirect speech

how to change these into Indirect ?

1- I said to him “you should have been more careful”

2- I said to him “you should be more careful”

3- he asked me “Have you finished reading the book I lent you yesterday” ?

4- HE said “If it rained, I would go home”

5- he said “how terrible”

here I want to ask two questions

is it right to say "how terrible is the weather! " or " how terrible the weather is ! " ??

6- he asked me "do you speak English ? "

And this is to turn into direct

I will ask him If he agrees

I will put my answers

1- I told him that he should have been more careful

no change… IS there any thing called “should had been” ? I think not

2-I told him he should be more careful

I think we can’t use “should have been” as the past form because the meaning would change If we did so

we can say I advised him to>>> but I want the ordinary way

3- My teacher says that here we will change the present perfect into past simple (not past perfect) …

He asked me If I finished reading the book he had lent me the day before

he refused using past perfect in the two

And I believe we can’t use the past simple in the second one and the past perfect with the first because that would make the second event in the past perfect form and the first in the past…

4- I think no changes … can we change it to the third conditional ?

5-

6- I think he asked me If I speak English"

I don’t think it should be changed … my teacher say it should be changed into past >> I find it a fact that doesn’t change in time >>

7-- I will ask him “Do you agree” ?

I think “will” doesn’t make us change tenses >> just as the present form “says” for example>>

please I want the most accurate grammatical answers … not just the way people talk but the way they should talk>>

Thanks in advance

Beeesneees · December 21, 2010, 1:30pm

[color=green]Hi Ahme…ed. My comments are in green.
Your answers are correct unless I have indicated otherwise:

1- I told him that he should have been more careful

no change… IS there any thing called “should had been” ? I think not

2-I told him he should be more careful

I think we can’t use “should have been” as the past form because the meaning would change If we did so

we can say I advised him to>>> but I want the ordinary way

3- My teacher says that here we will change the present perfect into past simple (not past perfect) …

He asked me If I finished reading the book he had lent me the day before

he refused using past perfect in the two

And I believe we can’t use the past simple in the second one and the past perfect with the first because that would make the second event in the past perfect form and the first in the past…

[color=green]He asked me if I had finished the book he lent me yesterday.

4- I think no changes … can we change it to the third conditional ?

[color=green]He said he would go home if it rained.

5-

[color=green]He said it was terrible.

6- I think he asked me If I speak English"

I don’t think it should be changed … my teacher say it should be changed into past >> I find it a fact that doesn’t change in time >>

[color=green]He asked me if I spoke English. Your teacher is correct.

7-- I will ask him “Do you agree” ?

Ahmeeeeeeeeeed · December 22, 2010, 2:56pm

ok

He asked me if I had finished the book he lent me yesterday.

But doesn’t this make the past simple earlier that the past perfect ?

Because he had lent me the book first and then I finished it

He asked me if I spoke English. Your teacher is correct.

Why ?? doesn’t it represent a thing that will not change ?? and time is not effective in it ?

Ahmeeeeeeeeeed · December 26, 2010, 3:44pm

???

Cerberus · December 27, 2010, 2:41am

My comments in bold.

Ahmeeeeeeeeeed:

ok

He asked me if I had finished the book he lent me yesterday.

But doesn’t this make the past simple earlier that the past perfect ?

Because he had lent me the book first and then I finished it

[b]That is right, the perspective changes in the middle of the sentence, which can seem a bit odd. This is sometimes possible in sentences that are long or have complicated sequences of tenses, or even in simpler sentences. The point of reference for “the past” changes from “the moment he asked” to “the moment he lent”, even though those two moments clearly did not take place during the same phase of the story.

There is one strong marker that tells you that the point of reference changes: “yesterday”. This word means “the day before today”, so it goes back to the present and then again to the past - but to a different past. This new past is only relative to the present here (he lent it before now), and so is unconnected to the tense of what came before. You could see it as a “reset” of the point of reference, of the meaning of the past.

If the word “yesterday” had not been there, you could very well have written “that he had lent me”. Even then, a change of perspective would still have been possible, but it would have been less likely.[/b]

He asked me if I spoke English. Your teacher is correct.

Why ?? doesn’t it represent a thing that will not change ?? and time is not effective in it ?

[b]Your argument is not unreasonable. However:

Even though this is indeed a thing that will not change, you cannot say that it was not true in the past; whenever something is true both in the past and now, and there is a past context, it is possible to put it in the past tense - though the present tense is also possible. This applies to any type of sentence.

I think that, somehow, there is a very strong link between tenses in dependent questions, such as this one. It is so strong that the tense in the dependent question must conform to the tense in the main clause, even though this might not be strictly logical. It is best considered idiom. There might be other types of sentences in which this happens.[/b]