Quere or Puede

Question

I am slightly confused.

If you are asking some to do something, e.g "will you do do this for me", what is the correct translation for the "will you" part?

I had thought Puede... was the most appropriate, but in things I am reading, Quiere is being used quite a lot.

Cheers, Scott

If you are asking someONE to do something :) - FELIZ77, Nov 18, 2010

Answer 1

Hi Scotty, yes, quiere is often used this way.

¿Quiere abrir la ventana?

This can often mean, hey, go open the window! lol

It is a polite form of putting it

Answer 2

If you think about it for a moment, you'll see that there are a variety of ways to say that in English as well, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that there's a variety of ways in Spanish. 'Will you..', 'Could you.', 'Would you..', Do you mind..' . In Spanish we have '¿Puedes..', '¿Podrías..', '¿Quieres..', '¿Querrías..', '¿Te importaría..' , '¿Me haces el favor de..' . Since there are different verbs and different tenses that you can use, you see that there are many combinations. They are all valid, they just differ in the level of politeness.

Do people actually say querrías in Spain? Here they say quisieras instead. - lorenzo9, Nov 18, 2010

For a question, yes. It's fine to say "¿Querrías abrir la ventana?. ¿Quisieras abrir la ventana? sounds very weird, though. It's a different matter with 'querría que me tocara la lotería' vs 'quisiera que..', where the latter is preferable. - bill1111, Nov 18, 2010

Similarly, one could say "pudiera/s abrir" Same idea. - DonK, Nov 18, 2010