Giving advice
You should fix the lamp tomorrow.
Left column: the order of the concepts, as chips — the slots you fill (who, action, thing, when) and the fixed words the language adds (a modal, a negator, a question marker). Click a slot, here or in the bar above, to choose what goes in it. Right column: the sentence those concepts make, the other orders the language allows, and the other ways to say it — each with what it changes. The rows are the languages switched on at the top of the page.
Try:
| Language | The order of the concepts | The sentence, other orders, other ways to say it |
|---|---|---|
| EnglishEnglish | should modal A true modal: no 'to', no -s. Advice with the speaker's opinion in it, and the listener free to ignore it. | You should fix the lamp tomorrow. Other ways to say it You ought to fix the lamp tomorrow. formal the same advice with a moral edge — what is right, not just what is wise. A little old-fashioned. You'd better fix the lamp tomorrow. casual a warning, not advice: 'You'd better fix it' implies trouble if you don't. |
| FrançaisFrench | devrais modal Advice is devoir in the conditional: vous devriez, 'you ought to'. The same -rais ending as je voudrais. | demain Après-demain = the day after tomorrow. Vous devriez réparer la lampe demain. Other ways to say it Vous feriez mieux de réparer la lampe demain. neutral “you would do better to” vous feriez mieux de — 'you would do better to'. A warning more than advice, like English 'you'd better'. |
| EspañolSpanish | debería modal Advice is deber in the conditional: debería, 'ought to'. The -ía ending is the conditional's, the same one in gustaría. | mañana Also 'morning' (la mañana): mañana por la mañana = tomorrow morning. Pasado mañana = the day after tomorrow. Usted debería arreglar la lámpara mañana. Other ways to say it Usted tendría que arreglar la lámpara mañana. casual “I would have to” tendría que — more colloquial, and a little more insistent: the advice sounds like something that really needs doing. |
Hover a word to see which concept it fills. The verb is always in its dictionary form: every pattern here is built on a modal, which carries the person and the tense, so any verb stays grammatical in every language. Where the modal is an ending (Korean, Japanese, Hindi's 'can'), the stem is computed. What this cannot show is agreement beyond the modal — adjectives, plural objects — which the grammar chapters cover.
For the same idea said at three levels of politeness, see Compare.