Each person sooner or later is faced with the need to convey verbally or in writing what he was told. However, quoting with quoting speech is not always suitable, because few people remember the words of the interlocutor. Then such a thing as indirect speech comes to the rescue. In Russian, it has some of its own characteristics, which will be discussed in the article. Let's deal with this issue in more detail.
What is indirect speech
Indirect speech in Russian is one of the syntactic ways to communicate other people's words in the stream of your own words, while retaining the meaning of the original statement. It is conveyed by narrative, incentive and interrogative sentences. In form, indirect speech is a complex proposal. The main part of the sentence is the one that refers to the words of another person. For example, "he said," "she asked," "they asked." The subordinate part is the one that directly reflects the words that convey. For example, “that the weather is good”, “so that he goes out”, “why do I need a passport there”. A comma is placed between the two parts: "He said that the weather is good," "She asked him to go outside," "They asked why they needed a passport."
Union Rules
Now it’s worth considering the ways in which indirect speech is expressed. Rules have their own characteristics. Let's look at the main ones. If the speaker just shared the information, then you need to use the pretext "what." For example, Ivan says: "Today I will go to the theater." In the form of an indirect speech, it will look like this: "Ivan said that today he will go to the theater." If the speaker asked the interlocutor to do something, then they use the pretext “to”. For example, Irina says: "Help me with my homework." This can be conveyed as follows: "Irina said that I would help her with her homework."
When transmitting a question, indirect speech in Russian uses two methods that depend on the type of sentence. If the speaker, asking, uses the interrogative word (“where”, “when”, “why”, “why”, “how” and others), then it becomes a union. For example, Anna asked: “Where in Moscow can I have a tasty meal?” Then her words are conveyed like this: "Anna asked where in Moscow you can eat deliciously." And the second method is used when there was no question word. For example, Nikita asked: “Will you go to the cinema today?” This is transmitted using the particle “whether”: “Nikita asked if you would go to the cinema today.”
Rules related to pronouns
It is worth noting how pronouns usually change in indirect speech. So, “I”, “we” are replaced by “he / she” and “they”, respectively, because the one whose speech is conveyed will no longer be the active subject of the conversation. But “you” and “you / you”, on the contrary, are replaced by “we” and “I”. “He / she” and “they” are sometimes also subject to replacement. If a person said something about someone, and then his words are passed on to this person or these people, then they use “you / you” or “you”.
Also, if necessary, pronouns are added to human speech. For example, if the boss gives the order: “Do this work by Thursday,” then the person transmitting the words will add the pronoun “we”: “The boss ordered us to do this work by Thursday.”
Rules related to verbs
Also, sometimes indirect speech in the Russian language requires some grammatical manipulations with verbs. For example, the incentive is replaced by the indicative in the past tense. Suppose Victor asked: "Give me a pen." In an indirect speech, it will already look like this: "Victor asked me to give him a pen."
Also, sometimes you need to change the tense of the verb - the present to the past. For example, Daria said: "Today I am going to cook borsch." If her words are conveyed the next day, then we can say this: "Daria said that yesterday she was going to cook borscht." The adverb “today” is logically replaced by “yesterday”.
Indirect Speech Exercise
It is not immediately easy to get used to such a feature of the Russian language as indirect speech. The exercises below will help you figure this out faster.
You can try to translate the following simple sentences into indirect speech:
- Tyutchev wrote: "I love a thunderstorm in early May."
- Irina asked: "Give me the salt."
- Nietzsche argued: "What does not kill me makes me stronger."
- Dmitry asked: "What should I do with this cat now?"
- Elina asked: “Are you coming to the university today?”
- Katya thought: “Do I need to go there tomorrow?”
- Konstantin thought: “I wonder if she likes me?”
Conclusion
As a conclusion, it is worth saying that, of course, there are pitfalls in such a phenomenon as indirect speech. The Russian language is rich in various tricks that are difficult for a foreigner, and sometimes even a native speaker, to understand. However, this phenomenon is always subject to rules that do not even contain exceptions. So it’s simple enough to understand the patterns by which indirect speech is formed. And when understanding comes, it will become much easier to use these rules in practice. Try it and see that everything is much simpler than it seemed at first glance.