Reporting a statement is the easy case and has its own page: one ש־ and you are done, on reported speech with ש־. This page is the two cases that ש־ does not cover. A reported question takes a different word depending on whether it was a yes-no question or a wh-question, and a reported command has to become either an infinitive or a whole subordinate clause, chosen by the reporting verb itself.
Yes-no questions: אם, meaning whether
An embedded yes-no question opens with אם. This is the same word as conditional if, and it is doing a completely different job — not stating a condition but naming an open question. The Academy's punctuation rules use exactly this shape as an illustration.
הפקיד שאל אם המנהלת תשוב היום.
hapakíd sha'ál im hamenahélet tashúv hayóm
The clerk asked whether the manager would be back today. (the Academy's own example — and note that no comma goes in front of the embedded clause)
תשאלי אותו אם הוא צריך שנחכה לו.
tish'alí otó im hu tsaríkh shenekhaké lo
Ask him whether he needs us to wait for him. (to a woman)
English speakers rarely struggle with this, and that is precisely the problem: English also uses if for both jobs — I'll go if it stops raining and ask him if he's coming — so nothing draws attention to the fact that two constructions have been merged. The one place it bites is when you go hunting for a different word because "this isn't really if". There isn't one. It is אם, and the inventory of direct question words is on indirect questions.
האם appears in this position too, and commonly. On he.wikipedia insource:/ השאלה האם / returns 858, insource:/ שאל האם / returns 28, and insource:/ לבדוק האם / returns 468 against 434 for insource:/ לבדוק אם / — roughly even (regex form, checked 17 August 2026; sampled hits are clean embedded questions, not quoted direct ones). האם is the written variant: constant in encyclopedic and journalistic prose, and hardly ever heard in speech.
עדיין לא ברור האם הטיסה תמריא בכלל.
adáyin lo barúr ha'ím hatisá tamrí bikhlál
It is still not clear whether the flight will take off at all. (written register — in speech this is אם)
Wh-questions: the question word stays, and nothing joins it
For everything else — מי, מה, מתי, איפה, איך, למה, כמה — the question word simply stands at the head of its clause. No ש־ is added, no other particle, nothing.
השאלה מתי יתחדשו השיחות נותרה פתוחה.
hashe'elá matái yitkhadshú hasikhót notrá ptukhá
The question of when the talks will resume remains open. (the Academy's own example)
אני לא זוכר איפה שמתי את המפתחות.
aní lo zokhér éifo sámti et hamaftekhót
I can't remember where I put the keys. (m. speaker)
A preposition travels in with its question word, exactly as it does in a direct question — Hebrew never leaves one stranded at the end, on no preposition stranding.
לא הבנתי על מה הם רבו.
lo hevánti al ma hem rávu
I didn't understand what they were arguing about.
The word order is the good news
English does something violent to a question when it embeds it: when is she coming back has to be un-inverted to when she's coming back, and getting that wrong is one of the loudest errors a learner of English makes. Hebrew has nothing to undo. A Hebrew question is a question word plus ordinary statement order, and it stays that way when embedded. Compare מתי היא חוזרת? with שאלתי אותה מתי היא חוזרת — the words after שאלתי אותה are unchanged.
Reported commands: an infinitive or ש + future
A command becomes one of two things, and the choice belongs to the reporting verb, not to you.
המורה ביקשה מאיתנו להשאיר את התיקים בחוץ.
hamorá bikshá me'itánu lehash'ír et hatikím bakhúts
The teacher asked us to leave our bags outside. (the infinitive route)
ביקשתי ממנו שיתקשר אליי לפני שהוא יוצא.
bikáshti miménu sheyitkashér elái lifnéi shehú yotsé
I asked him to call me before he leaves. (the same verb, now with ש + a future verb)
אמרו לנו לא לפתוח את החלונות בגלל הרעש.
amrú lánu lo liftóakh et hakhalonót biglál hará'ash
We were told not to open the windows because of the noise. (a negative command — לא goes in front of the infinitive)
המפקד הורה להם לחזור לבסיס לפני חצות.
hamefakéd horá lahém lakhazór labasís lifnéi khatsót
The commander ordered them back to base before midnight. (formal)
No source consulted for this guide gives a verb-by-verb inventory of which reporting verbs take which, and inventing one would put ungrammatical sentences on the page. So here are three, measured with a single probe shape on he.wikipedia (regex form, 17 August 2026); look anything else up in a dictionary before you commit to it.
| Verb | infinitive | ש + future | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| ביקש מ־ | 852 | 123 | both live; the infinitive is the default |
| הורה ל־ | 307 | 20 | strongly infinitive |
| דרש מ־ | 223 | 12 | strongly infinitive |
אמר is deliberately missing from that table, because its two shapes are not two ways of saying one thing. אמר לו ללכת is told him to go — a command. אמר לו שהוא הולך is told him that he is going — a statement, and therefore the other page's business. Any count that pooled them would be measuring two constructions at once.
| Direct | Reported |
|---|---|
| אתה בא? | שאלתי אותו אם הוא בא |
| מתי היא חוזרת? | שאלתי אותה מתי היא חוזרת |
| למה ביטלתם? | שאלו אותנו למה ביטלנו |
| תשאיר את התיק בחוץ! | ביקשו ממני להשאיר את התיק בחוץ |
| אל תפתחו את החלונות! | אמרו לנו לא לפתוח את החלונות |
Common Mistakes
1. Adding ש after the question word. The commonest production error on this page, and an understandable one — every other subordinator in the language (כש־, אחרי ש־, למרות ש־) carries a ש. An embedded question does not. On he.wikipedia insource:/ שאל מתי ש/ and insource:/ יודע מתי ש/ both return 0, against 2 and 46 for the same probes without the ש.
❌ שאלתי אותה מתי שהיא חוזרת
Incorrect — nothing is added to the question word: שאלתי אותה מתי היא חוזרת. מתי ש־ does exist, but it means 'whenever' — תבוא מתי שתרצה — which is not what an embedded question says.
✅ שאלתי אותה מתי היא חוזרת והיא אמרה שהיא לא יודעת.
sha'álti otá matái hi khozéret vehí amrá shehí lo yodá'at
I asked her when she's coming back and she said she didn't know.
2. Reporting a yes-no question with ש. ש־ reports statements, and it gets carried over to questions by habit. insource:/שאל אותו שהוא / returns 0 against 35 for insource:/שאל אותו אם הוא /.
❌ שאלתי אותו שהוא מגיע לישיבה
Incorrect — ש־ reports a statement, never a question. A yes-no question takes אם: שאלתי אותו אם הוא מגיע לישיבה.
✅ שאלתי אותו אם הוא מגיע לישיבה או שנתחיל בלעדיו.
sha'álti otó im hu magía layeshivá o shenatkhíl bil'adáv
I asked him whether he's coming to the meeting or we should start without him.
3. Dropping the מ־ before the person you asked. English ask someone to do something has no preposition at all, so nothing prompts you to supply one. ביקש requires מ־: insource:/ביקש ממנו ל/ returns 852, insource:/ביקש אותו ל/ returns 2.
❌ ביקשתי אותו לשלוח לי את הקובץ
Incorrect — the person asked takes מ־: ביקשתי ממנו לשלוח לי את הקובץ.
✅ ביקשתי ממנו לשלוח לי את הקובץ עוד היום.
bikáshti miménu lishlóakh li et hakóvets od hayóm
I asked him to send me the file today.
4. Backshifting the tense. English pushes a reported verb one step into the past — he asked if she was coming. Hebrew does not: the embedded verb keeps the tense the original speaker used, whatever tense the reporting verb is in. More on this on sequence of tenses.
❌ שאלתי אם היא הגיעה כבר לתחנה
I asked whether she was getting to the station
Incorrect as that report — a past verb here reports a past question, 'had she already got to the station'. If what was asked was 'is she getting to the station?', Hebrew keeps the present: שאלתי אם היא מגיעה לתחנה.
✅ שאלתי אם היא מגיעה לתחנה או שכדאי לאסוף אותה מהבית.
sha'álti im hi magi'á latakhaná o shekedái le'esóf otá mehabáyit
I asked whether she was getting to the station or we'd be better off picking her up from home.
Key Takeaways
- A reported yes-no question takes אם — whether, not conditional if: הפקיד שאל אם המנהלת תשוב היום. האם does the same job in written Hebrew and is very common there (השאלה האם returns 858 on he.wikipedia).
- A reported wh-question keeps its question word and adds nothing: השאלה מתי יתחדשו השיחות. Inserting a ש is the standard error, and the probes for it come back at zero.
- The word order does not change. Hebrew never inverted the question in the first place, so there is nothing to undo — and nothing to over-correct.
- A reported command becomes an infinitive (ביקשה מאיתנו להשאיר) or ש + future (ביקשתי ממנו שיתקשר). Which one is a property of the verb; look each one up rather than guessing.
- ביקש takes מ־ before the person asked: ביקשתי ממנו, never ביקשתי אותו.
- Hebrew has no backshift. The embedded verb keeps the original speaker's tense: שאלתי אם היא מגיעה, not הגיעה.
- A negative command puts לא in front of the infinitive: אמרו לנו לא לפתוח את החלונות.
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- Indirect Questions: שאלתי אם, לא יודע מהB1 — Hebrew embeds yes/no questions with אם and keeps wh-words such as מה, איפה and למי without adding another question marker.
- אם: If and WhetherA2 — אם does two unrelated jobs with the same three letters: it opens a real condition, אם תבוא בשמונה נספיק לאכול, and it embeds a yes-no question, שאלתי אותו אם הוא מכיר מישהו. English merges the same two jobs into if, which is why the split is invisible rather than difficult — and why האם, which looks like a stronger אם, does neither of them the same way.
- Verbs That Take an Infinitive (רוצה, אוהב, מנסה, מתחיל)A1 — The first two-verb sentence a beginner can build: one conjugated verb, then an infinitive that never changes for anything. The whole pattern turns on a single question — is the second action done by the same person as the first? If it is, use the infinitive; if it is not, Hebrew switches to ש plus a finite verb.
- Reported Speech with ש־B1 — To report what someone said, Hebrew keeps the tense exactly as it was spoken and attaches ש־: הוא אמר שהוא בא is 'he said he was coming'. The freedom is real but bounded — it belongs to the complement of a reporting verb, and a relative clause still reads its present tense from now.