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I have to transform the following sentence into indirect speech:
'I haven't got any money',he said
My transformation is :
He said he hadn't got any money.
The answer key only lists
He said he didn't have any money
as a correct answer, but my sentence seems correct to me. What do you think?
"He didn't have" and "He hadn't got" are semantically equivalent. In some dialects one will be preferred over the other, and it is not unusual for reported speech to shift from a less preferred phrase to a more preferred version. To some, this will seem to be making it more formal, but really it's about shifting it to what fits "better".
I don't know what dialect or views of formality your question book (or worksheet or whatever) is based on, but your answer is just as correct, taking English as a whole, as the one in the key.
Now, if we take English back in time a bit, the key's answer might be considered more correct in general. But as it stands now, the two are interchangeable.
"Haven't got" is informal spoken English, and "do not have" is the more formal way of saying the same thing, more suitable for written English, which possibly explains the test author's selection of "didn't have" for the indirect speech version. "Hadn't got" would be acceptable in informal indirect speech.
