How to Ask for a Favor?
How do you ask someone for a favor in German? You basically have 2 options: You can go for the casual version or the formal version. Let's look at both in turn.
01.12.2023
How do you ask someone for a favor in German? You basically have 2 options: You can go for the casual version or the formal version. Let's look at both in turn.
How do you ask someone for a favor in German? You basically have 2 options: You can go for the casual version or the formal version. Let's look at both in turn.
If you want to ask a friend for favor, all you need to say is this:
The German word "der Gefallen" means favor in English and the way you use this is "jdn. einen Gefallen tun". Let's look at an example:
If you were to ask your boss for a favor, you would turn the above question into it's formal form. You would say:
Or, to be even more polite you would say:
Notice that the first version uses "Können", whereas the second, more polite version uses "Könnten". It's the difference between "Can you do me a favor?" and "Could you do me a favor?".
Lastly, you could also say:
Here, we use 'jemanden um etwas bitten' and the modal particle 'wohl' to smooth out this sentence and make it polite. Let's have a look at another example dialogue, this time using the formal version:
To be on the safe side, we always recommend you use one of the more polite versions in formal settings.
