"Анна спросила дедушку, не хочет ли он пообедать с ней."

Translation: Anna asked grandfather if he wanted to eat lunch with her.

[PleasingFungus]

How on earth does "не хочет" come together to mean "wanted"? Where did the negative (не) go?

[jsiehler]

Asking a question with a negative can be a slightly polite way of doing it, and it's done more often in Russian than in English. "Не хочешь пообедать со мной" is actually a pretty neutral way of asking "Do you want to have lunch with me?" If you use the negative in English, like, "Don't you want to have lunch with me?", it sounds as if you were expecting lunch, and you're surprised or disappointed. "Don't you want to? Why not? I thought you would."

[Henry741757]

While I agree with you that it's less common, it would be appropriate in this sentence.
If you're talking about a asking a third person to lunch, you can say "I asked him if he didn't want to have lunch some time".

So I think it should also be accepted in this case.

[PleasingFungus]

Oh, I hadn't thought of "don't you want..." at all. That makes a lot more sense, thanks!

[jsiehler]

Tripped up by Анна / она again.

[cptchuckle]

The default English translation should say "her grandfather", not just "grandfather", because it is in third person about someone else's grandfather. One can only omit this "her" if Anna is related to the same grandfather as the speaker.

[Moiss521835]

Yes, you are right

[Ariana000005]

Анна and она , tripped up

[ULRICHSCHL4]

I guess "ли" is a short form for "если". Am I wrong??

[Zaralily]

Not quite. I guess this is where it comes from, but "ли" is a question particle (for a question answered with yes/no) not a conjunction like "если". I've encountered it in indirect questions following the word that is in question. See: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/11729749

[MarcoJansen96]

Why not дедушке? Doesn't спросить go with dative, like сказать кому-то?

[Jeffrey855877]

Because it's in accusative case. It's a masculine word but has a feminine ending, which means that it's declined like a feminine word, but determiners and adjectives attached to it decline according to masculine tables.
Masculine - Папа: Анна спросила этого папу - Anna asked this dad
Feminine - Мама: Анна спросила эту маму - Anna asked this mom

This set-up makes sense - there's no "-a" masculine or neuter nominative ending, and the only available declension rules are those for feminine words ending in "-a". But since it is masculine, words which attach to and thus have to agree with the masculine noun are declined according to masculine tables.
Examples:
эта молодая мама - this young mom
этот молодой папа - this young dad

[KH40bu]

why does grandfather not have "her" before it? Like he's just everyone's grandfather tf

[Jeffrey855877]

Could it also be "my grandfather" and not Anna's?

[Jeffrey855877]

The word order certainly is confusing to English-speaking me. If it were in English word-order, then it would be "ли он не хочет пообедать" - "if he did not want to eat lunch".

I assume it's an idiomatic ordering, but it seems peculiar, so I was wondering if there's any explanation for it.

[RobertKlui]

I answered correctly but my reply was flagged as wrong, even though the correction was exactly the same...