"Почему вы спрашиваете?"
Translation:Why do you ask?
22 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Спрашивать/спросить is asking a question, просить/попросить is asking a favour.
Is спрашивать perfective and then спросить imperfective? Or is it the other way around?
It will certainly work as a possible transaltion, but the emphasis would shift: "зачем"="for what purpose" while "почему=why". I.e. "Почему вы спрашиваете?" will allow the answer "because I didn't know that" or "because I've forgotten that" while "Зачем вы спрашиваете?" would not.
Почему ты спрашиваешь?
Conjugation classes in Russian behave in a very predictable manner, unless you have a really irregular verb like есть (ешь / едите), хотеть (хочешь / хотите) or дать (дашь / дадите ; создать works similarly).
799
Is there a reason why вы is used mostly in this course? Is that the same in 'real life'?
Actually, This course has about 200 sentences with вы and about 360 with ты. I did not count the oblique forms, though.
- 799
Then it's just my imagination xD. I really felt that вы was used way more frequently than ты.
Thanks for replying
Regarding on your progresses, you may have randomly more phrases with вы than ты, independently of the course -if I get right how duolingo works :)
- 112
Yeah, I assumed this is an exception, since it didn't have that form under the hints, thanks.
Просить is the verbs that means asking for a favour or an object. Asking a question is спрашивать (also used for asking someone to call a person you came for or wish to speak with)
In my opinion, "Why do you ask?" would be more natural in English. Can this sentence be translated that way?
Are these common way of speaking, both in Russian and in English ? I'm asking this question because in Italian I would add a direct complement, like "Why do you ask that ?"
How do I know the difference between something being вы singular or plural?