Forming indirect questions
- If we do not begin a question directly, but begin it with something like: Can you tell me…? Do you know…? I wonder if…? The word order is the same as in an affirmative statement.
- Direct question: What is he doing?
Indirect question: Do you know what he is doing? - Direct question: Where have they been?
Indirect question: I wonder where they have been?
- Direct question: What is he doing?
- If the direct question contains the auxiliary DO, we omit it in the indirect question.
- Direct question: What do you want? Indirect question: Can you tell me what you want?
- Direct question: When did she leave?
Indirect question: Do you know when she left?
- In yes/no questions, if or whether is used. The word order is the same as in reported questions.
- Direct question: Have you seen my dog?
Indirect question: Could you tell me if you have seen my dog?
- Direct question: Have you seen my dog?
Comments
I present this as ‘polite commands’.
Rude: Tell me what time it is!
Polite: I was wondering if you could tell me what time it is?
Rude: Give me a pen!
Polite: Could you give me a pen?
Rude: Move!
Polite: Would you be able to move, please?
So lesson is: 1) be rude, 2) what can we say to be polite (Could you…, I was wondering if…?) 3) now put them together – but DO NOT change the word order of the rude command.
Getting students to transform real questions into indirect questions is very confusing for them – and artificial since the basic underlying sentence is a command, not a question. As such, it does not change. It’s best to teach this in isolation from indirect speech since syntactically they are actually completely different things.
Has the train left?
Hi Prasoon
If you want to ask this with an indirect question, you can say something like:
“Could you tell me if the train has left?”
I hope that helps!