The sentence in indirect speech would be:
Direct speech: We are players.
Indirect speech: He told me that they were players.
Explanation:
When converting direct speech to indirect speech, several changes occur:
1. Quotation marks are removed.
2. The reporting verb ‘said’ changes to ‘told’ when there’s an indirect object (me).
3. The pronoun ‘we’ changes to ‘they’ to maintain the perspective of the original speaker.
4. The verb ‘are’ changes to ‘were’ due to backshifting, which occurs when the reporting verb is in the past tense.
Backshifting is a key concept in indirect speech. When the reporting verb is in the past tense (as ‘said’ is here), the tense in the reported speech typically shifts back to one tense. In this case, present simple ‘are’ becomes past simple ‘were’.
This transformation preserves the original meaning while adapting it to the structure of reported speech.
Other questions:
Which of the following is a synonym for ‘eager’? a) hesitant b) enthusiastic c) lazy d) indifferent