Starting a question with 'Could you' vs. 'Can you'? [duplicate]

Both are fine grammatically, but it appears that you are aiming for a relatively formal setting …

Suppose you want to ask someone to do something, say to tell you the way to a station. …

I agree with FumbleFingers; I feel like "could you" would be almost too polite and create …

Could you explain it to me (if you weren't doing something else right now)? If we mean to use …

Could you please lend me your pen? All of them are polite requests. In general: could you …

更多内容请点击:Starting a question with 'Could you' vs. 'Can you'? [duplicate] 推荐文章