When speaking English wih Maria Ma. again today, I noticed that she was sometimes confusing two verbs: to remember and to remind.

Just like they do in Spanish, these terms have a close and sometimes confusing relationship. I've often heard my advanced-level students struggle with this, so your faithful English conversation teacher is back with another lesson on another pair of frequently confused words...

The comparative meanings & usage of remember and remind is a fairly complex discussion, so I'm simply going to focus on the most common problem between them. So, to begin with, the most common meaning for these two verbs are:

to remember = to think back or recall knowledge from memory

to remind = to put in the mind of someone

Both of these definitions are in the same conceptual area, so it's easy to see why they can be confused. So let's take a closer look at their similarities first:

Both verbs usually refer to events or actions in the PAST...

I remember when he called me a year ago.

That reminds me of (the time) when he called me a year ago.

...but they can refer to events or actions in the FUTURE...

Remember to call him tomorrow!

Remind me to call him next week!

Hopefully, these examples have also illustrated the general difference in form: FUTURE events are expressed in the imperative form, and PAST events are expressed in the indicative form.

However, the meaning of these verbs overlap in the second-person imperative form.

To illustrate by way of another example; in the first-person (I) voice, you would say...

Remind me to call my mother.

...but in the second-person (you) voice, you would say...

Remember to call your mother.

More can be said about the relationship between these two words, but it would only serve to confuse, so that is enough for now. End of lesson!