Choose the correct reported speech of the following sentence :
They said, 'A bad carpenter quarrels with his tools.'

Question

Accepted Answer

Option 1 is the correct reported speech because the original sentence, "A bad carpenter quarrels with his tools," is a proverb or a universal truth. When reporting proverbs or universal truths, the tense of the verb within the quotation remains unchanged. Therefore, the reported speech should maintain the present tense "quarrels."

Here's why the other options are incorrect:

*   **Option 2: They said that a bad carpenter quarrelled with his tools.** This is incorrect because it changes the tense of the verb from present ("quarrels") to past ("quarrelled"). Since the original statement is a proverb, the tense should not be altered in reported speech.

*   **Option 3: They say that a bad carpenter has quarrelled with his tools.** This is incorrect because it changes the tense to present perfect ("has quarrelled"). Again, the tense of a proverb should not be changed when reporting it. Also, the reporting verb "said" in the original sentence is in the past tense, so "they say" is inconsistent.

*   **Option 4: They told that a bad carpenter was quarrelling with his tools.** This is incorrect for several reasons. First, "told" usually requires an object (e.g., "They told *me* that..."). Second, it changes the tense to past continuous ("was quarrelling"), which is inappropriate for reporting a proverb. The proverb expresses a general truth, not an action happening at a specific time in the past.