Can you please help me with this sentence? I believe this reported speech sentence: people said that he had move to Australia, is correct. However, my textbook says: people said that he moved to Australia is also correct without any clear explanation. Can it mean that because the fact that he moved to the Australia was a true incident, we don't need to change the verb form here?

Question

Answer

You can say any of these:
"People said he had moved"
"People said he moved"
"People said he has moved"

The third one doesn't follow the rule about reported speech because it jumps to the present, but that doesn't make it wrong. It says that the statement "he has moved" is true based upon what people told you in the past. It is similar to the sentence

"Copernicus said that the earth revolves around the sun".

Answer

In reported speech the past simple is used to report a sentence in the the present simple tense:
Direct: "he moves to Australia" => reported: "people said that he moved to Australia"
Reported speech in the past perfect tense is used to report a sentence in the present perfect, the past simple or the past perfect:
Direct: "he moved / he has moved / he had moved to Australia" => reported "people said he had moved to Australia".

I hope it helps.

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