Reported Speech and Rhymes

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Welcome to class! 

In today’s class, we will be talking about reported speech and rhymes. Enjoy the class!

Reported Speech and Rhymes

REPORTED SPEECH

A reported speech is also known as indirect speech. It is used to give an account of past incidents by recapturing the actual utterance of the original speaker, but without using the exact words of the speaker. This is to mean that, a few necessary changes are bound to occur in reported speech. These changes often involve the verb, the pronoun and sometimes adverb used by the original speaker.

Changes in Verbs

When reporting speech, changes occur in verbs, which is used to account for tenses. Tenses usually take a step backwards, i.e. a speech with a present tense verb changes to the past, a speech with a past tense verb changes to past perfect, and so on. Below are instances of such changes.

Verb Changes

‘I am going to the office,’ he said. (Direct speech)

He said he was going to the office. (Indirect speech)

‘The meeting held this afternoon,’ she said. (Direct speech)

She said the meeting had held in the afternoon. (Indirect speech)

Pronouns Changes

‘We will be there next week,’ said Peace. (Direct speech)

Peace said they would be there the following week. (Indirect speech)

‘I want to eat now,’ he said.

He said he wanted to eat then.

‘She saw me,’ he said.

He said she had seen him.

Changes in Adverb

‘I will get it today,’ Frances promised.

Frances promised that she would get it that day.

‘I will cook for my family tomorrow,’ announced dad.

Dad announced that he would cook for his family the following day.

Evaluation

Change the following sentences to reported speeches.

1. ‘Yesterday, I was in Abuja’, said Peju.
2. ‘My father asked me to close my door’, said Chidera.
3. ‘I am getting married tomorrow’, said Remmy.
4. ‘I will pay the debt next week’, said Emeh.
5. ‘Class, do you know this boy’? asked Mistress Ope.
6. ‘The ceremony ended three days ago,’ said Ayobami.
7. ‘Rain falls heavily in July’, said George.
8. ‘I am free now’, said the young woman.

RHYME

Today, we are going to look at how rhymes are used in poetry.

Remember some weeks ago, you learned that rhymes are easily identified when two words sound alike.

In poetry, the rhyming scheme is commonly used to refer to words that sound alike at the end of lines of a poem. When rhymes occur at the end of lines, they are called end rhyme or final rhyme.

Now there are two types of end rhyme, rhyming couplet and alternate rhyme.  An alternate rhyme is labelled thus as abab, cdcd, etc, while a rhyming couplet is labelled as aabbccdd, etc.

Other types of rhyme are initial rhyme (occurring at the beginning of a line of poetry) and internal rhyme (occurring in the middle of a line of poetry).

Now let us see an example of a poem with its rhyming pattern:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?                                          a

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:                                      b

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,                            a

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:                                  b

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,                                    c

And often is his gold complexion dimmed,                                       d

And every fair from fair sometime declines,                                       c

By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:                    d

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,                                                e

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’ st,                                         f

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,                           e

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st                                          f

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,                                 g

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.                                        g

Shakespeare,

Sonnet 18

This is an example of end rhyme. If you notice, you will see that the letters at the far right represent the last word of each line. Where the letters are the same, it means those last words rhyme together. Then as we move to another stanza, we choose another group of letters.

This is a poem of fourteen lines. A poem of fourteen lines is called the sonnet.

 

In our next class, we will be talking about the Type of Pronoun and Speech Work.  We hope you enjoyed the class.

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