Spanish word of the week: importar

This week’s Spanish word of the week is importar.

Importar is a verb that means to mind or to matter. You can listen to the pronunciation of importar in the audio clip below:

importar is a very useful word to describe how people feel about something:

No me importa esperar. I don’t mind waiting.

Apart from being used with the infinitive, as in the previous example, you also use it with que and then the subjunctive:

No le importa que su hijo no trabaje. He doesn’t mind his son’s not working.

importar is very often used with either of these structures when you want to make a polite request:

¿Le importa cerrar la ventanilla? Would you mind closing the window?

¿Te importa que echemos un vistazo? Do you mind if we look round?

You can also use importar to talk about how much something matters, especially in the phrase No importa It doesn’t matter:

“Llegaremos un poco tarde” – “No importa” “We’ll be a bit late” – “It doesn’t matter”

Lo que importa es que seguimos juntos. What matters is that we’re still together.

No importa que sea una semana más o una semana menos. A week one way or the other won’t matter.

Come back next week for another insight into Spanish vocabulary!