To return to the example the original poster quoted from the grammar book:
Quote:
Максим слышал, что Горький произвёл скандал в Нью Йорке 'Maxim heard (that) Gorky created a scandal in New York'. Notice that the corresponding 'that' in English is omissible; in Russian it is not.
I think the interesting point here is that this is a sentence which needs to follow rules for reported speech. So to clarify, is it permissible to leave out the что in sentences with reported speech, too? In English, reported speech is marked by a back shift of the verb tense in addition to 'that', as in 'I am sick of it' - 'he said he was sick of it'. In my native German, the verb form receives a subjunctive inflection which also permits leaving out the conjunction 'dass', which is identical to 'that' and 'что' here. In both English and German we have an additional grammatical feature which marks the utterance as something someone else said but which you just report and do not necessarily agree to. I am not aware of anything other than что to do the same for a Russian utterance with reported speech. Can the что still be left out?
Robin