Can you (do something)?

This is a "neutral" way of asking someone to do something. It's not super-polite but it's also not rude. In the example above, a mother uses this to ask her son to do the dishes. If the son wasn't always helpful, she might ask the question differently like this:

Anant, I want you to load up the dishwasher tonight.

And if the mother wanted to be really polite to him for some reason, she might ask:

Anant, would you mind loading up the dishwasher?

This phrase appears in these lessons: