4.21 Reported speech and the shift of tense — Epoché
What you will be able to do Report what someone said, using dire que , répondre que , promettre que and their relatives. Shift the tenses when the reporting verb is in the past: present to imperfect, perfect to pluperfect, future to conditional. Report questions: yes-or-no questions with si , and other questions with où , pourquoi , qui , ce que and ce qui . Report orders with dire de and an infinitive. Change the words of time and place: hier to la veille , demain to le lendemain . Sentences from this lesson, before the explanation. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Si je ne suis pas trop occupée, je vous aiderai demain. [1] If I'm not too busy, I'll help you tomorrow. Il a changé du jour au lendemain. [2] He changed overnight. Il l'a expliqué en détail. [3] He explained it in detail. Ils ont changé les règles. [4] They've changed the rules. Il savait qu'il allait être viré. [5] He knew he was going to be fired. Je lui ai expliqué les règles. [6] I explained the rules to her. Pourquoi est-ce que quelqu'un ferait quelque chose comme ça ? [7] Why would someone do something like that? Prerequisites : 4.20 — this lesson follows 4.20 Grammar . You need the imperfect from 4.14 Grammar , the conditional from 4.15 Grammar and the pluperfect from 4.17 Grammar , because these are the tenses that reported speech moves into. Reported speech, also called indirect speech, is the way a narrative tells you what people said without quoting them. Newspapers are full of it, and so is every novel you will read in the readings of this phase. The good news is that the French system of shifting tenses is almost identical to the English one. The differences are in the details: in how questions are reported, in a tense English often skips, and in a few words of time. How English does it English shifts the tenses back after a past reporting verb, and so does French. "I am busy" becomes he said he was busy ; je suis occupé becomes il a dit qu'il était occupé . Present becomes past in English and imperfect in French. Future becomes conditional in both: will becomes would , aidera becomes aiderait . English can leave out that ; French cannot leave out que . He said he was busy is perfectly good English. In French the que is obligatory: il a dit qu'il était occupé . Many of the English glosses in this lesson drop that ; no French sentence drops que . English reports questions with if or whether ; French uses si . He asked me if I was busy is il m'a demandé si j'étais occupé . This is the si that means whether , mentioned in 4.16 Grammar , and unlike the si of conditions it can be followed by a future or a conditional. English what in a reported question is ce que or ce qui in French. The direct question qu'est-ce que tu as acheté ? becomes il m'a demandé ce que j'avais acheté . English uses what in both, so here English is no help. English often keeps the simple past where French needs the pluperfect. She asked me who arrived first is acceptable English. French moves the earlier event back: qui était arrivé en premier . Statements When the reporting verb is in the present, nothing shifts. The speaker is reporting something said now, so the tense of the original stays. French English Il dit qu'il est innocent. [8] He says that he is innocent. Elle dit qu'elle est occupée. [9] She says she's busy. Il dit qu'il a gagné. [10] He says he's won. When the reporting verb is in the past, the tenses shift back, and English shifts them the same way. French English Il m'a dit qu'il était occupé. [11] He told me that he was busy. Il a dit qu'il avait faim. [12] He said that he was hungry. Il m'a dit qu'il m'aimait. [13] He told me he loved me. Elle m'a dit qu'elle s'amusait. [14] She told me that she was having fun. Elle a dit qu'elle aiderait. [15] She said she would help. Il m'a dit qu'il l'achèterait. [16] He told me he'd buy it. Il a promis qu'il nous aiderait. [17] He promised he would help us. Il a promis qu'il ne mourrait pas. [18] He promised he wouldn't die. The first four shift a present to the imperfect: je suis occupé to il était occupé , j'ai faim to il avait faim , je t'aime to il m'aimait . The second is a reminder that the French idiom avoir faim keeps avoir : the imperfect avait here is not a pluperfect, because there is no participle after it. The last four shift a future to the conditional: j'aiderai to elle aiderait , je ne mourrai pas to il ne mourrait pas . You met this as the future seen from the past in 4.15 Grammar . Notice too that the pronouns change as they do in English: je becomes il , te becomes me . The full table of shifts Direct speech Reported after a past verb present: je suis occupé imperfect: il a dit qu'il était occupé perfect: j'ai gagné pluperfect: il a dit qu'il avait gagné future: je le ferai conditional: elle a dit qu'elle le ferait near future: je vais appeler aller in the imperfect: elle a dit qu'elle allait appeler imperfect, pluperfect, conditional no change The examples in this table were written for this lesson to show the pattern. The last line matters: a sentence already in the imperfect stays in the imperfect, because there is nowhere further back for it to go. The shift is not compulsory when the content is still true at the moment of reporting. The corpus has il m'a demandé qui est cet homme , with the present, where the English gloss shifts to was . Both languages allow this, and in both the shifted form is the safer default. Questions Yes-or-no questions: si French English Il m'a demandé si j'étais occupé. [19] He asked me if I was busy. Elle m'a demandé si j'allais bien. [20] She asked me if I was all right. The direct question was tu es occupé ? or est-ce que tu vas bien ? . Reported, it loses its question mark, its inversion and its est-ce que , and gains si . The word order becomes the order of a statement: subject, then verb. The tenses shift exactly as for statements. Questions with a question word French English Il m'a demandé où ell