reported speech how much does it cost

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How much does this cost or this costs?

Thread starter Ravend
Start date Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012

Senior Member

Both are OK, but the seond one is a more common way of expressing it, at least in the USA.

Your teacher is correct. If you were asking a simple direct question, you could only use the first expression. "How much does this cost?". This uses the emphatic present tense. You can't say "How much this costs?" or "How much costs this?" as direct questions. Although they might look logical, they are not acceptable in normal English usage. However, in your full sentence, the main verb is 'could tell'. The subject of the verb is 'you'. The indirect object of the verb is 'me'. The direct object of the verb is the noun clause 'how much this costs', i.e. this part of the sentence is a statement and not, in itself, a question: so it is not phrased as a question. This is the pedantic answer. As ceremoniar has pointed out, normal usage does not necessarily follow strict grammatical rules. Regional variations will inevitably occur in a language that is used all round the world, frequently by people who learnt it as a second language. The best advice I can give you is to read lots of English books and magazines, listen to good English such as you will hear on the BBC World Service, and do your best to copy what you see and hear.

I don´t want to argue with a native speaker, but I think that the first sentence is not gramatically correct - because the second part is not a direct question but an indirect question, so the word order must be the same as in indicative (subject + verb), not as in questions (auxiliary + subject + verb). Am I right?

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100+ Reported Speech Examples

Reported speech, or indirect speech, is a vital part of English communication. It allows us to share what someone has said without using their exact words. This article provides 100+ examples of reported speech across various sentence types to help you understand and use it effectively.

Read our awesome article Reported Speech: Rules, Examples and Exercises to understand the rules and practice this grammar point.