Verbes français essentiels et leurs contraires
A1 French luyện nghe · Tiếng Pháp · Phù hợp với người mới bắt đầu
Does “demander” mean “to demand” in French?
Demander looks like “demand” but is milder by default. It is the ordinary, neutral verb for asking: elle lui a demandé l’heure is “she asked him the time,” je peux te demander quelque chose ? is “can I ask you something?” Tone and context can still make a request firm, but the verb itself carries none of English “demand”'s insistence — for that, French usually reaches for exiger.
The pattern is worth copying exactly: demander quelque chose à quelqu’un. The person you ask takes à, not a direct object, so it is je demande l’addition au serveur — literally “I ask the bill to the waiter.” The noun mostly follows the verb: une demande is usually a request or an application, though in economics it does mean “demand” (l’offre et la demande, “supply and demand”).