“Could you bring the bill, please?” in Bangla

When to use it

Use it at the end of a meal in a Bengali restaurant to ask the waiter for the bill.

The sentence in English: “Could you bring the bill, please?”

In “Could you bring the bill, please?” ‘Could’ is a softer ‘can’ and comes before ‘you’. ‘bring’ stays in its base form, and ‘please’ goes at the end after a comma.

Could

auxiliary verbcan · form: conditional · modal verb; "Could you…?" is a polite request

you

pronounpersonal pronoun

bring

verbbring · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · after a modal verb the main verb has no "to"

the

determinerdefinite article

bill

nounnoun; the check at a restaurant

please

adverbpoliteness word

The sentence in Bangla: “দয়া করে বিলটা আনবেন?”

In “দয়া করে বিলটা আনবেন?” the word for ‘you’ is left out, but the ending ‘-বেন’ of ‘আনবেন’ (will bring) shows a polite আপনি request; Bengali often asks politely with the future tense. ‘বিলটা’ is ‘বিল’ plus the classifier ‘টা’, which works like ‘the’.

দয়া

nounnoun 'kindness'; দয়া করে = 'please'

করে

verbকরা · form: conjunctive participle · দয়া করে literally 'doing kindness' = please

বিলটা

noun'bill' + classifier টা, like English 'the bill'

আনবেন

verbআনা · tense: future · person: 2nd (আপনি, polite) · polite future of আনা 'to bring', used for requests

What changes from one language to the other: English × Bangla

English gets politeness from ‘Could’ and ‘please’; Bengali from ‘দয়া করে’ and the verb ending ‘-বেন’. English ‘the’ is a separate word; Bengali attaches ‘টা’ to the noun.

Example conversation