A Guide To Learn English Language

In our daily life we come across many sit­u­a­tions where we have to make a request or a com­mand. There are dif­fer­ent lev­els of polite­ness in mak­ing a request. You have to know them because they will help oth­ers to under­stand what you want to con­vey. Oth­er­wise, there is a prob­a­bil­ity of tak­ing your request as a com­mand. The fol­low­ing are some of the ways how you can request some­thing in English.

1. Give me some money.
2. Will you lend me some money, (please)?
3. Can you lend me some money, (please)?
4. Could you lend me some money?
5. Do you think you could lend me some money?
6. I won­der if you could lend me some money.
7. Would you mind lend­ing me some money?
8. If you could lend me some money, I’d be very grateful/I’d appre­ci­ate it.

Make requests — Can you please lend me some money?

In the above list, the (1) is the least polite way of mak­ing a request and (8) is the most polite. They are arranged in the ascend­ing order of polite­ness. The last form (8) is mostly used in writ­ing not gen­er­ally not used in speaking.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that using the proper degree of polite­ness is very impor­tant in the Eng­lish lan­guage oth­er­wise it sounds awk­ward. For exam­ple, if you say ‘would you mind fetch­ing me some water?’ to your ser­vant, it looks odd and he/she will be sur­prised. Also, when you want to ask some­thing (pen for exam­ple) from a stranger don’t say ‘Will you lend me your pen?’ as it will sound the rude­ness and he will under­stand it as a com­mand instead of a request. Hence, before you ask some­thing, iden­tify the close­ness of the per­son with you and make the request in cor­rect form.