When we report what people say, we usually change the tense of the verbs to reflect that we are reporting – not giving direct speech. This pattern is followed when we report questions and there are also other important changes between direct questions and reported questions.
When we report yes/no questions we use ‘if’ or ‘whether’.
The tense of the verb changes as it does in reported speech but we don’t use auxiliary verbs. The word order is the same as in an affirmative sentence.
When there is a question word (what, where, why, who, when, how) we use that question word in the reported question but there is no auxiliary verb and the word order is like an affirmative sentence.
Look at some more examples:
Notice that the reported questions do not have a question mark at the end.
Indirect questions
Similar to reported questions are indirect questions.