Polite requests in Swedish with skulle

Okay. So, let's construct some more sentences.

"Could you give me money?" To say "could" in Swedish, you would say "skulle", "skulle".

Now, "kunna", you may remember, "kunna", of course, means "to be able". In Swedish, when you say "could you give me", what you're actually saying is, "could you be able to give me?" So, how do you think you would say, "could you give me money?", given that "could you" would actually be, "could you be able to give me money?" Skulle du kunna ge mig pengar? "To be able" is, of course, how we would translate "kunna", which is basically "to can", even though that word doesn't exist in English.

So, skulle du kunna ge mig pengar?

"Could you give me money?" If we look at this sentence: "Were you going to give me money?" It sounds different from the sentence before, "Could you give me money?" Of course, "Could you give me money?" is a very polite way of asking, "Could you give me money?" But when you say, "Were you going to give me money?" it's almost as if you're questioning the person, right?

"Were you going to give me money?" Like, you're unsure, "Were you going to give me money?" And in Swedish, you use the same word, so you say "skulle", "skulle".

However, this time you remove the "kunna". So instead of saying "skulle du kunna ge mig pengar", which would translate as "could you give me money?", what you would say is "skulle du ge mig pengar?", "skulle du ge mig pengar?" And this is almost me trying to confirm: "Wait, were you going to give me money?", "skulle du ge mig pengar?" So, "Were you going to give me money?" Skulle du ge mig pengar?

Given that knowledge, how would you say, "Were we going to eat today?" Skulle vi äta idag?

So once again you use skulle, and this time you don't use kunna. Let's say you want to say, "Could we eat today?" So how would you translate, "Could we eat today?" Well, that would be skulle vi kunna äta idag, so you add on the kunna. Skulle vi kunna äta idag.

Okay, so let's ask this question: weren't you eating with me today? Meaning weren't you going to eat with me today? And of course, at this point you're familiar with the notion that going—this is an English type of sentence structure. We don't use the going, and the do, and the are, and every type of sort of sentence. In Swedish you don't need that, so let's think of, "Weren't you eating with me today?" Skulle inte du äta med mig idag?

So, this sentence, if you break it up, the first part: skulle inte du, because we said skulle could be used as were you going to, skulle.

Inte du, that's negating, so weren't you.

Äta med mig, to eat with me, med mig. Idag, today.

Skulle inte du äta med mig idag?

Okay. So do you remember the word to say "need", and we said it was related to the English word "behove"? Behöva. Att behöva.

Okay. So given that, how would you say, "Do you need money?" Behöver du pengar? Behöver du pengar? The sentence structure is, of course, "Du behöver pengar.", "You need money." And then, to make it into a question instead of a statement, you would say, "Behöver du pengar?" And att behöva is one of those -er, so it becomes behöver.

"Yes, but not today." So, to say "but", you would say men, men.

Given that, how would you translate "Yes, but not today"? "Ja, men inte idag." "Do you want to eat?" "Vill du äta?" And of course, "Does he want to eat?" would be "Vill han äta?", and so forth.

"Do you want to eat with me today or tomorrow?" And to say "or" in Swedish, you would say eller, eller.

So, how would you translate "Do you want to eat with me today or tomorrow?" So, "today" is idag, and "tomorrow" is imorgon.

So, you would translate this as: "Vill du äta med mig idag eller imorgon?" "Vill du äta med mig idag eller imorgon?" And you may hear, as we've talked about before, that some of the letters will fall out, so you may hear somebody say, "Vill du äta med?" instead of med, "Med mig "Idag" instead of idag, "—eller imorgon, "Imorgon".

But once again, if you enunciate and you pronounce them as they are written in this fashion, that is totally understandable as well.