Conjugating the Irregular Spanish Verb Entender (to Understand/Know About)

Spanish verbs fall into different groups, and each group is conjugated a little differently. If you’re going to master Spanish verbs like entender, you need to be able to identify which group a verb belongs to: regular (follows regular conjugation rules for -ar, -er, and -ir verbs), stem-changing (morphs depending on how you use it in a sentence), spelling-changing (has consonant-spelling changes in some forms to follow pronunciation rules), or reflexive (reflects the action back on the subject of the sentence).

In the present tense, entender (ehn-tehn-dehr) (to understand/know about) has an e-to-ie stem change in all but the nosotros and vosotros forms. Here’s the present tense conjugation:

The following examples show you entender in action:

• ¿Entienden lo que decimos? (Do you understand what we are saying?)

• Sí. Lo entendemos muy bien. (Yes. We understand it very well.)

And that’s the end of entender’s stem change; it conjugates normally in the preterit, imperfect, and future tenses. Take a look at the following tables and examples:

You use the preterit tense like this:

• ¿Entendió tu hermano esa lección? (Did your brother understand that lesson?)

• Sí. Mi hermano y yo entendimos esa lección. (Yes. My brother and I understood that lesson.)

Here are some examples of the imperfect tense:

• Mis padres me entendían mucho. (My parents used to understand me a lot.)

• Nos entendíamos sin palabras. (We used to understand each other without words.)

The following samples put the future tense to work:

• ¿Entenderás la novela? (Will you understand the novel?)

• Por supuesto que la entenderé. (Of course I will understand it.)