"आपको ठंडा पानी चाहिए।"

Translation: You need cold water.

[Pips75]

So चाहिए can mean "need" as well as "want"?

[emrys29]

Yes.
Need can specifically be translated to ज़रूरत if you want to avoid any confusion. But चाहिए, without context, can mean both need and want.

[AndriLindbergs]

Thanks for this. I have found this a bit difficult to assimilate. But without any obvious context, couldn't this be either "want" or "need". Some of these sentences have given me wrong for using "want". Are they mistaken?

[ragingfire4]

Feel free to report it if it marks you wrong... for example, I would have put this as "want" if not for the wordbank

[BlondeandBlue]

im confused about when you use aapko, aapki, aapka etc. It makes no sense to me rn.

[maz1269]

"chahiye" requires dative (oblique) case. appko is in dative case.

[MamaLloyd]

I wrote "want" and they said I was wrong and should have used need. This needs to be corrected.

[acegirl_6]

In what situations does this mean "need" and in what situations "want"?
Or is it just either whenever?

[Oinophilos]

Is this literally something like "for you cold water is needed"? Why no part of "to be" at the end?

[Ted-B]

How about " Do you want cold water"

[mfcovington]

That would be "क्या आपको ठंडा पानी चाहिए ?"

[Roni568]

Why use ko

[maz1269]

because in invokes dative case. to whom does the cold water चाहिए? to आप

[AhmedHasan682228]

From what i understand from other peoples' spoken hindi, if you speak this sentence with an inflection, it is understood to be a question. If you speak it without the inflection it is just a declaritive sentence?

[vinay92]

It is a declarative statement but you're right that when spoken with a certain inflection, it can function as a question (similar to certain varieties of English).

Formally, the way to make it into a question would be to add a क्या at the beginning.