Reported questions and orders: ĉu, kie, -u

Reported questions: ĉu and the ki- words

A yes/no question keeps ĉu, the word that opened it:

• Li demandis, ĉu mi venos. - He asked whether I would come.
• Mi ne scias, ĉu li estas hejme. - I do not know whether he is at home.

Never se: it means if only in the sense of on condition that. And never ke ĉu: ĉu does the job alone.

A question-word question keeps its ki- word, and nothing moves:

English has to undo where do you live into where I lived. Esperanto never inverted it, so there is nothing to undo, and the tense stays the speaker's own.

Reported orders and requests

An order inside a ke clause takes -u:

The -u carries the order by itself: no word for should or to. It works after every verb of asking, telling and wanting.

After peti (ask) and ordoni (order) an infinitive also works:

• Li petis min helpi lin. - He asked me to help him.
• Li ordonis al ni resti. - He ordered us to stay.

The -u version works after all of them, so keep it as the default.