Question

Change the sentence in indirect speech:
“Don’t you know the way home?” I said to her.

a)I asked her whether she did not know the way home.
b)I said to her if she knew the way home.
c)I asked her if she knew the way home.
d)I asked her whether did she not know the way home.

Answer 1

Hint: In indirect speech, the present tense changes to past tense, along with other necessary changes.

Complete step-by-step answer:

In grammar, there are two kinds of speech - Direct and Indirect.
Indirect speech. we use quotes to repeat the exact thing an individual said. However, in indirect speech, the direct quote is said in the third person, and so the quotation marks are removed. In order to change the direct speech into indirect speech, we must change the tense of the sentence.

In the given sentence, it is present tense, which will change to past tense. So, ‘do not know’ will change to ‘did not know’. Only one of the verbs is subject to change because the phrase ‘did not knew’ would be grammatically incorrect.
The given sentence is an interrogative sentence, which means that the start of the indirect speech will be ‘I asked her’, since it is a question.

Negative sentences do not become affirmative during the change. The negatives like ‘not’ are retained.
The sentence begins with the negative helping verb ‘don’t’. So, indirect speech will be joined using the word ‘whether’.
So, the sentence will be constructed as ‘I asked her whether she did not know the way home.’
Hence, the correct answer is option ‘a’.

Note: Break the sentence into separate parts and try to convert each part into indirect speech.