entender — to understand

How to use entender in Brazilian Portuguese

Entender is the Brazilian Portuguese verb for to understand. It is a regular -er verb, so once you know the endings there are no surprises.

Three tenses do almost all the work in conversation. The presente covers the present and the near future: eu entendo — I understand. The pretérito perfeito is the finished past, the English simple past: eu entendi — I understood. The pretérito imperfeito is for habits, background and how things used to be: eu entendia — I used to understand. Because entender is one of the 58 most-used verbs, the page also has both subjunctives: the presente do subjuntivo, the mood of wishes, doubts and “quero que…” — eu entenda — that I understand — and the imperfeito do subjuntivo, the tense of hypotheticals: eu entendesse — if I understood.

Said the Rio way, entendo sounds like en-TEN-doo. The nós form entendemos ends in the carioca “sh”, en-ten-DEH-moosh — the most recognisable sound of the Rio accent, where São Paulo says a plain s. Notice entende is en-TEN-djee: in Brazil a final -de softens to “jee” and -te to “chee”, something European Portuguese never does.