No Backshift in Reported Speech

This is the single biggest difference from English. English shifts the tense back when the report is in the past: “He is tired” → “He said he WAS tired.” Greek does NOT. The reported verb keeps EXACTLY the tense of the original words: Είπε ότι είναι κουρασμένος - literally “He said that he IS tired”, present kept present even though είπε is past. A future stays future - Είπε ότι θα έρθει (“He said he would come”, lit. “will come”); a past stays past - Είπε ότι έφαγε ήδη (“He said he had already eaten”, lit. “ate”). The PERSON may still change as in English (I → he), but the TENSE never does. Think of ότι/πως as a window onto the speaker’s actual words, kept in their original tense - resist the English urge to shift είναι → ήταν.