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Direct and indirect speech?
1. Direct = The nurses told me, “We weren’t surprised by Cousin’s book.”
2. Indirect = The nurses told me that they hadn’t been surprised by Cousin’s book.
Hi, can sentence number 3 bereplaced by number 1?
3. Direct = The nurses told me, “We haven't been surprised by Cousin’s book.”
2 Answers
- Tom LLv 78 years agoFavorite Answer
From the context, it seems that 'Cousin' is a proper name - the author of a book.
If these are 'made up' sentences, you have some leeway, but if they are real quotations, they must stay as they are, exactly as spoken.
There is a slight difference between 1 and 3. No. 3 is in present perfect tense. The present perfect is used for things that have happened in the immediate past. No. 1 is in simple past. That's used for things that are over and done, things in the more distant past. There's no hard and fast rule about when the 'immediate past' is over and you start to use simple past. That is the speaker's decision.
Yes, you could use 1 in place of 3 if the timing fits.
- ?Lv 68 years ago
If "C" of cousin is made "c", the second answer will absolutely be correct.
Source(s): Teacher
