Reported speech

[lolobouise]

Hello !

I would like to know which of the following sentences is correct :

"Lucy wants to know who Vlad Tepes was."

"Lucy wants to know who was Vlad Tepes."

Even if the first one looks and sounds more grammaticaly correct to me, I'd like to know if the second order is correct as well or not and why.

Thanks for helping me.

[forum_mail]

I suppose that the first one is okey but the second one doesn't look fine...

[zahari]

To me only the first sentence is correct and that's because it is an indirect question.In indirect questions,i.e. when there is an introductory verb before the question such as "I'd like to know", "can you tell me", "I wonder" etc., we use affirmative order of words.

The second one would be correct only as a direct question:

Lucy asked/wondered, "Who was Vlad Tepes?"

[lolobouise]

Thank you very much...