Question

Change the following sentence into indirect speech-
She said to me, “Do you know Jack?”
a) She told me if I knew Jack.
b) She asked me if she knew Jack.
c) She asked me that she knew Jack
d) She asked me if I knew Jack.

Answer 1

Hint:Indirect speech is another form of reported speech. It is a means of expressing the content of statements, questions, or other utterances, without quoting them explicitly as is done in direct speech.

Complete answer:
Direct speech has quoted words in it, whereas indirect speech does not have quoted statements in it. For example He said, “I’m coming” is a direct speech, whereas, He said that he was coming, is an indirect speech. The indirect speech should not be confused with indirect speech acts. In grammar, indirect speech often makes use of certain syntactic structures such as content clauses (that), and sometimes infinitive phrases. In the given question we have to convert the direct sentence into an indirect one.
Now, let us examine all the given options to find out the correct answer :
Option ‘a’ is She told me if I knew Jack. ‘Told' is being used in this sentence, which is incorrect. The speaker is asking a question and ‘told’ doesn’t replace a question tag while converting the statement into an indirect speech.
Option ‘b' is She asked me if she knew Jack. This sentence has changed the meaning of the given sentence so this cannot be the correct answer.
Option ‘c’ is She asked me that she knew Jack. This sentence is also changing the meaning of the given sentence and ‘that’ is incorrectly placed here. So, this is also an incorrect option.
Option ‘d’ is She asked me if I knew Jack. This is the correct option because the given question in inverted commas is in the simple present tense, the appropriate introductory verb ‘asked’ is also used correctly.
As we have analyzed all the given options, we can easily figure out the correct answer. Here, the indirect speech of the given direct speech is – She asked me if I knew Jack. Hence, option ‘d’ is the correct option.

Note:
While changing the direct speech statement into an indirect one, one must keep in mind that the meaning of the sentence remains the same. Two of the given options changed the meaning of the given sentence, so we eliminated them.