Pedir vs preguntar: the one question, the chart, the quiz

Pedir or preguntar: the one question

Ask what you want back. If you want an answer — a fact, a yes or a no, a time, a reason — the verb is preguntar: preguntar la hora, preguntar dónde está la estación, preguntar si viene. If you want something given or done — a thing, a favour, permission, an action — the verb is pedir: pedir la cuenta, pedir ayuda, pedir permiso, pedir a alguien que venga. English asks both with one verb, and only the words after it tell them apart: ask what time it is, ask for the bill, ask him to come.

So the words after the verb are the quickest test. A question word or si — qué, dónde, cuándo, cuánto, por qué, si — means preguntar. Something you want handed over — la cuenta, ayuda, permiso — or que and a verb in the subjunctive means pedir: le pedí que me llamara, I asked him to call me. A noun can follow preguntar too, when it stands for a question: preguntar la hora is asking ¿qué hora es? Information can go either way: pedir información asks for it to be handed over, like any other thing, and preguntar por el horario asks a question about it — the academies' own definition of preguntar is hacer preguntas o pedir información.

Every use, in one chart

Two rows in the chart below deserve a second look. Ask after someone — or ask for someone, at a door or on the phone — is preguntar por: preguntó por ti; hay un señor que pregunta por usted. Pedir por in that sense is heard among Catalan speakers and in parts of Latin America, and the academies advise against it — possibly, they note, an echo of English ask for; pedir por means to pray for someone or something — pedir por la paz — and, in the Southern Cone, to call for something. And to borrow is pedir prestado, because you ask for the thing on loan; prestar on its own is to lend.

One English ask, two Spanish verbs

Each pair in the chart below uses the same English verb. Preguntar si asks whether someone will do something; pedir que asks them to do it, and the verb after que goes into the subjunctive — te pido que vengas — the trigger the subjunctive quiz drills. Preguntar el precio is the buyer's question; pedir 300 euros is the seller's price. And preguntar por ti asks how you are, while pedir por ti prays for you.

Pedir changes its vowel: pido, pidió, pida

Pedir is a stem-changing verb; the chart below has its present and its preterite. The e of the stem becomes i in pido, pides, pide and piden, in pidió and pidieron, in the whole subjunctive (pida, pidamos, pidiera), in the command pide and in pidiendo. Everywhere else it keeps the e: pedimos, pedís, pedí, pedía, pediré, pedido. Preguntar is regular all the way through: pregunto, preguntó, pregunte, preguntando.

Ask a question, wonder, ask after: three phrases with preguntar

Three phrases English speakers reach for. To ask a question is hacer una pregunta — ¿puedo hacerte una pregunta? — because Spanish makes a question rather than asking it; the academies define preguntar itself as hacer preguntas. To wonder is preguntarse, to ask yourself: me pregunto si vendrá, I wonder whether he'll come. And to ask about something or after someone is preguntar por or preguntar sobre: me preguntó por mi familia, preguntó sobre el horario.

Why do English speakers mix them up?

Because English asks everything with ask and lets the little word after it do the work: ask what, ask whether, ask for, ask to, ask after. Spanish moves that job into the verb itself, so the slips run in two predictable directions. Ask someone to do something feels like a question, so it comes out as preguntar — le pregunté que me ayudara — where Spanish needs pedir que. And ask for someone comes out as pedir por, from the English for, where Spanish says preguntar por. The quiz on this page is built from both, plus the restaurant (pedir for ordering) and the borrowed car (pedir prestado).

There is no first-party error rate on this page yet: our mistake tagger counts ser vs estar, por vs para, the tenses and the object pronouns, not these two verbs. When it does, the number will sit here, the way it does on the sibling pages. Until then the quiz is the measure.

What comes after pedir and preguntar?

Saber vs conocer is the other pair where English has one verb — know — and Spanish two. Pedir que puts the next verb in the subjunctive (te pido que vengas), which the subjunctive quiz drills, and the questions you ask with preguntar start with qué or cuál. Asking a stranger anything is a tú vs usted choice too: ¿le puedo hacer una pregunta? And bien vs bueno is the next small pair English blurs. The free Spanish level test places you on the A1–C2 scale in five minutes; A2 vs B1 Spanish says what changes after the first levels, and how to go from A2 to B1 is the plan.