"Could you speak slowly?"
Translation:Você poderia falar devagar?
11 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
When we ask a question in a formal way, we use "poderia". "Podia" is to show a past capacity
The English question is ambiguous without context. It could have been asking whether, yesterday, you were able to speak more slowly.
Great fact to know. 'poderia' is the politest way to ask a question? or is there a way of saying something like 'would you' ? Also, is there 'May I' in portuguese? haha
No, we don't have another way to say "would you". It is also translated as "poderia". May I = Can I in Portuguese (Posso....?)
I got a rather strange explanation of my error: I misread the English sentence and typed "Você pode falar devagar". The explanation that I was given about my error was "You used the ele/ela form 'pode' instead of the eu form 'poderia'", which is horribly misleading, since the error is in the mood, not the person. I don't know how doable it is, but if the explanations could be tweaked a bit, that'd be great.
