When relaying what someone said in the past—like updating a friend on a phone call you had with an auto mechanic—your physical and temporal perspective changes.
If the mechanic said, "The engine is here," you wouldn't say, "He said the engine was here" (unless you were standing in his shop!). You would say, "He said the engine was there."
When using past indirect speech in Italian, you must shift adverbs of place and time to match this new perspective.
Shifting Places
Words indicating proximity to the speaker shift to indicate distance.
- qui / qua (here) becomes lì / là (there)
Shifting the Present
Words pointing to the current time shift to point to a specific time in the past.
- oggi (today) becomes quel giorno (that day)
Similarly, words using "this" (questo / questa) shift to "that" (quello / quella). For example, "this evening" (questa sera) becomes "that evening" (quella sera).
Shifting the Future
If the original speaker promised something for "tomorrow" (domani), that reference must shift forward relative to the past moment you are describing.
- domani (tomorrow) becomes il giorno dopo (the next day) or il giorno seguente (the following day)
Shifting the Past
Finally, if the original speaker talked about "yesterday" or "last week", you must shift these backward relative to the reported conversation.
- ieri (yesterday) becomes il giorno precedente (the previous day) or il giorno prima (the day before)
- la settimana scorsa (last week) becomes la settimana precedente (the previous week)
