Mandarin · Chapter 14 · Lesson 11 · Grammar primer
Tingshuo hearsay speech
Grammar for HSK 3.
The short version
说 (shuō) needs no word for 'that' after it
Subject + 说 (shuō) + the whole statement, dropped straight in with nothing standing in for English 'that'. 妈妈说她很忙 (mā ma shuō tā hěn máng) is complete as it stands - there is no slot to fill with a linking word at all.
老师说明天有考试。 Lǎoshī shuō míngtiān yǒu kǎoshì.
Reported speech never shifts tense in Mandarin
English backshifts the verb ('she said she WAS busy'); Mandarin verbs do not conjugate at all, so the reported clause is worded identically whether you are reporting something said a moment ago or long ago. Only the surrounding context tells you which.
她说她很忙。 Tā shuō tā hěn máng.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 24 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 11 of 14 in this chapter