He said, “Mice will play when the cat is away”?

[Tait-ka]

He said, “Mice will play when the cat is away”?

(A) He said that mice would play when the cat was away.
(B) He said that mice will play as the cat is away.
(C) He said that mice will play when the cat is away.
(D) None of the above

I created the above question.

Please tell me which reported speech version is correct. I think A and C are correct.

 

[emsr2d2]

You're right that A and C work. B doesn't because it uses "as" instead of "when". In this context, those two words are not interchangeable.
Note that in BrE the idiom is "When the cat's away, the mice will play".

 

[SoothingDave]

Same in AmE.

 

[Tait-ka]

You're right that A and C work. B doesn't because it uses "as" instead of "when". In this context, those two words are not interchangeable.
Note that in BrE the idiom is "When the cat's away, the mice will play".

I have heard that when there is a proverb/idiom/general or universal truth in the quote marks of direct speech, it is recommended to not backshift while converting it into reported speech. This advice seems rigid to me. I think both backshifted and nonbackshifted reported speech forms are equally good and used by native speakers. Am I right?

 

[emsr2d2]

I have heard that when there is a proverb/idiom/general or universal truth in the quote marks of direct speech, it is recommended to not backshift while converting it into reported speech. This advice seems rigid to me. I think both backshifted and nonbackshifted reported speech forms are equally good and used by native speakers. Am I right?

There's no hard and fast rule about this. To be honest, I wouldn't turn this into reported speech at all. I'd stick with direct speech. If I had to convert it into reported speech, the non-backshifted version does at least keep the words of the idiom the same.

 

[jutfrank]

I have heard that when there is a proverb/idiom/general or universal truth in the quote marks of direct speech, it is recommended to not backshift while converting it into reported speech.

You keep getting this fundamentally wrong. We do not convert direct speech into reported speech. We report the content of what somebody said. Sometimes, this content is the words themselves. One such case is when someone says a proverb:

"When the cat's away, the mice will play", he said.

The sentence above reports what the man said. This sentence tells us that the man said a proverb. The proverb is the content.

This advice seems rigid to me. I think both backshifted and nonbackshifted reported speech forms are equally good and used by native speakers. Am I right?

No, you're getting it all very wrong as far as I can see. I'm not sure you understand what reported speech is.

 

[Tait-ka]

We do not convert direct speech into reported speech. We report the content of what somebody said. Sometimes, this content is the words themselves. One such case is when someone says a proverb:

"When the cat's away, the mice will play", he said.

The sentence above reports what the man said. This sentence tells us that the man said a proverb. The proverb is the content.

OK.

Ali said, "When the cat's away, the mice will play."

As you said, in the above sentence we are reporting what Ali said. Ali said the proverb.
Now my question is: Is the above sentence reported speech? I think it is, because we are reporting someone's words here.

 

[jutfrank]

Imagine a man named Ali saying something:

"I'll be there soon."

This is speech, represented in written form. The speech marks show that clearly. The utterance communicates a message.

Ali said he'd be here soon.

This is a report of what Ali said, uttered by someone else. We don't know or care exactly which words Ali used because it doesn't matter. Only the message matters. Making such reports of what other people said often requires nothing more than adjusting some of the words and phrases that the original speaker used. For this reason, we call it 'indirect', because the message is communicated without using the exact sentence that Ali originally used.

Ali said "I'll be there soon."

This is also a report of what Ali said, but in this sentence Ali's exact words and phrasing are merely repeated. The speaker is quoting Ali 'directly', with speech marks, and without changing any of his words. It is not very common in everyday life to do this, because people's exact words don't usually matter: Only the message matters. This kind of sentence is very common in novels, for example, because when we read stories we like to imagine the exact words people say.

Obviously, if someone says a proverb, and for some reason you want later to report that fact to someone else, probably the best way to do it is by repeating the proverb yourself. Proverbs do carry important messages, of course, but what really makes a proverb a proverb is the exact words that are used. Otherwise, it isn't a proverb.

Does that all make sense?