recordar vs acordarse de

Question

How do we know when to use recordar vs acordarse de?  Is one used more than the other in some regions or for certain occasions/emotions?E.g. Siempre nos acordaremos de ellos.

Silvia Piriz · Accepted Answer

Hola L.B.
Both recordar and acordarse de mean “to remember”, but they differ in how they’re constructed grammatically. Recordar is a regular transitive verb, which means it doesn’t need a preposition and can be used directly with the object you’re remembering.
For example, you can say:
Recuerdo esa película. (“I remember that movie.”)
On the other hand, acordarse de is a pronominal verb and must be used with the preposition “de”, along with a reflexive pronoun. For instance: Me acuerdo de esa película. It has a slightly more emotional or conversational tone compared to recordar, which tends to sound a bit more neutral or formal.
Your example, “Siempre nos acordaremos de ellos”, is completely correct and shows the proper structure with acordarse de.
Additionally, it’s useful to know that acordar on its own can also mean “to agree”, which makes it different from acordarse de, even though they look similar.
If you’d like to explore this further, here are two lessons that go into detail. The first one, acordar vs acordarse de, clearly explains how acordar can be used to mean “to agree” and how that differs from the reflexive form. The second lesson, using recordar, looks at how recordar can be used to mean “to remind” someone of something.
I hope this helps and happy learning!
Silvia