Reported Speech: Questions & Commands
अप्रत्यक्ष वाणी: प्रश्न और आदेश
Reporting a question or a command reshapes the English sentence completely, not just the tense — question word order disappears, and commands turn into a to-infinitive — while Hindi barely has to reshape anything at all.
Grammar Comparison
व्याकरण तुलना
Reported questions lose their question word order entirely
'Where do you live?' → She asked where I lived. (no more do-support, no more inverted order — it becomes a plain statement shape)
'तुम कहाँ रहते हो?' → उसने पूछा कि मैं कहाँ रहता था। (कि सिर्फ़ उद्धृत प्रश्न को जोड़ देता है, शब्द-क्रम वही रहता है)
Hindi reports a question almost exactly the way it reports a statement — attach कि (that) before the quoted question, with no restructuring needed, because Hindi never inverts subject and verb for questions in the first place (a yes/no question is marked only by क्या or by intonation, and it stays right where it was). English has real question machinery to dismantle: do-support disappears, subject and verb return to statement order, and the question mark is dropped. Reported commands simplify even further, collapsing down to told/asked + person + to + verb — 'Sit down!' becomes She told him to sit down, much like Hindi's own compact को कहा pattern (उसने उससे बैठने को कहा).
Vocabulary
शब्दावली
| English | Pronunciation | Hindi |
|---|---|---|
| She asked where I lived. | shee askt wair eye livd | उसने पूछा कि मैं कहाँ रहता था।usne pūchā ki maiñ kahāñ rahtā thā. |
| He asked if I was ready. | hee askt if eye wuz RED-ee | उसने पूछा कि क्या मैं तैयार हूँ।usne pūchā ki kyā maiñ taiyār hūñ. |
| She told him to sit down. | shee tohld him too sit down | उसने उससे बैठने को कहा।usne usse baiṭhne ko kahā. |