‘Second person’ in direct speech is changed into either ‘first person’ or ‘third person’ in reported speech, as shown below.
Direct speech ————-> Reported speech
Second person ——————> First person or Third person
You (Sub) I / We he/ she / they
You ( obj ) me/us him/her/ them
Your(P.Adj) my/our his/her/ their
Yours ( P. Pron) mine/ ours his/hers/ theirs
Yourself(E.P/R.P) myself/ —— himself/herself/ ———
Yourselves( ” ) ——–/ ourselves ——-/———/ themselves
As ‘yourself’ is singular, it is only related to ‘first’ and ‘third’ person ‘singulars’. Similarly, the plural ‘yourselves’ is only related to ‘first’ and ‘third’ person ‘plurals’.
Now, let’s go through an example to understand the above mentioned changes in second person ‘You’.
- Manuel said to his wife, ” Darling, ‘you’ look so beautiful today. ‘You’ seem to have used the new cream on ‘your’ face”
Manuel told his wife lovingly that ‘she’ looked so beautiful that day, and added that ‘she’ seemed to have used the new cream on ‘her’ face.
Here, we can see that the ‘second person’ subject ‘you’ is changed into ‘third person singular’ subject ‘she’ and the second person possessive adjective ‘your’ is changed into third person singular possessive adjective ‘her’, as the ‘you’ here stands only for one person. ( Manuel’s wife)
Another example,
Teacher said to us, ” ‘you’ are the best students I have ever seen “
Teacher told us that ‘we’ were the best students she had ever seen.
Here, the second person subject ‘you’ is changed into the first person plural subject ‘we’, as the ‘you’ here stands for more than one person( We)
