Breakdown of ¿Podría usted confirmar la transferencia por correo electrónico, por favor?
Questions & Answers about ¿Podría usted confirmar la transferencia por correo electrónico, por favor?
Spanish requires both an opening ¿ and a closing ? in direct questions. They frame exactly what is being asked, which is especially helpful in long sentences.
Podría is the conditional form of poder (to be able to / can). In requests, the conditional often adds politeness and distance, similar to English could you…?
- ¿Podría…? = more formal/polite
- ¿Puede…? = still polite, but a bit more direct
- ¿Podría usted…? is a very standard formal request in Spain.
Usted is the formal “you”. It can be included for clarity or extra formality, but it’s often optional because the verb already marks it:
- ¿Podría usted confirmar…? (more explicitly formal)
- ¿Podría confirmar…? (still formal, slightly less explicit)
Both are correct:
- ¿Podría usted confirmar…? is very common in formal customer-service style.
- ¿Usted podría confirmar…? adds emphasis to usted (like Could YOU…?), which may sound slightly more pointed depending on context.
In Spanish, confirmar usually takes a direct object without a preposition:
- confirmar + [thing] → confirmar la transferencia
Using de would be unnatural in this structure. (You might see confirmación de la transferencia when it’s a noun phrase: the confirmation of the transfer.)
Transferencia often implies a bank transfer in administrative/payment contexts. If you want to be extra explicit, you can say: la transferencia bancaria. The article la refers to a specific transfer already known in the conversation.
Both can work, but they’re slightly different:
- confirmar la transferencia = confirm the transfer (in general)
- confirmarme la transferencia = confirm the transfer to me (adds the indirect object me)
If you want the “to me” nuance, you can also say: ¿Podría confirmármela por correo electrónico, por favor? (with pronouns attached).
They’re two different uses of por:
- por correo electrónico = by/through email (method/channel)
- por favor = fixed phrase meaning please (not literally “for favor” in modern usage)
Yes, por correo electrónico is neutral and standard. In Spain you also commonly hear:
- por email (very common, informal-to-neutral)
- por e-mail (also seen)
In formal writing, por correo electrónico is often preferred.
Several positions are natural, with small shifts in tone:
- ¿Podría usted confirmar la transferencia por correo electrónico, por favor? (very common)
- ¿Podría usted, por favor, confirmar la transferencia por correo electrónico? (extra polite/formal)
- Por favor, ¿podría usted confirmar…? (puts “please” upfront)
It’s common to set por favor off with commas when it feels like an aside, especially in formal writing: …, por favor?
In more casual writing, the comma may be omitted, but including it is perfectly correct and often clearer.
Accents mark stress and sometimes distinguish forms:
- podría has an accent because the stress falls on -rí- (po-DRÍ-a).
- electrónico is stressed on -ni- (e-lec-TRÓ-ni-co).
These accents are required for correct spelling and pronunciation.