A-ha! I knew it all along, probably before he told me my family was Portuguese, but a woman at Cal Tech has proved it beyond doubt, because I was never taught this distinction (from the comments here):

. . . comprender indicates understanding something you've learned or something you've been told, where as entender is somehow more innate, like conceptual understanding, so Comprende is much more correct contextually than Entiende.

Not related in any way, beyond my wanting to give her a link, but I had a boss once who used the expression that forms her blog title constantly, usually in reference to DCOM arcana. Very annoying guy. Not to imply that CalTechGirl's blog is annoying, though. I only meant--oh, forget it. Posted by Ilyka at November 5, 2004 09:37 PM in hell is other people