Question

Change into indirect speech answer and make statement affirmative as stated below.

1) “I want to work for you,” I said. (Change into indirect speech)
2) I can’t pay you. (Rewrite making it affirmative)

Answer 1

Hint: An affirmative sentence is used to express positive statements and comments.

Some of the rules to be kept in mind while changing the direct speech into indirect speech-
● The quotations marks are replaced with ‘that’.
● We change the tenses of the verbs. (Usually in the past tense)
● Make sure to use the appropriate pronouns.

Complete answer:

1) Direct speech refers to the original words of a speaker in quotation marks, whereas Indirect speech refers to the words spoken by the speaker in the past, therefore there is a change in the tense of the verbs.
Example:
Direct speech- The teacher said,” He will get good grades.”
Indirect speech- The teacher that he would get good grades.
Now, let’s solve the question:
I said that I wanted to work for him/her/you. We can see few changes; The quotation marks have been replaced with ‘that’, change in the tense of the verbs and you can use either him/her/you, as there are no changes in the pronoun ‘you’ unless specified.
Hence, the correct answer will be - I said that I wanted to work for him/her/you.

2) The given statement is a negative sentence, as we can see the use of ‘can’t’. We will only change the form of the sentence from negative to positive, but we will try to keep the meaning unchanged.
Hence, the correct answer will be – I am unable to pay you.

Note: We do not change the tense of the verb, if the reporting verb is in the present tense or future tense (say, will say). Also, remember not to use any negative words in an affirmative sentence.