To Care About
To Mind
intransitive verb, godan verb
Because the hiragana ends with an う sound, you know this word is a verb. The kanji itself means care so the verb vocab version is to care about.
This word generally implies a more direct physical or verbal expression of care, rather than just mentally caring about someone or something. The exception is when it's used in the negative, like 構わない (I don't mind).
Since this word consists of a kanji with hiragana attached, you can bet that it will use the kun'yomi reading. You didn't learn that reading with this kanji, so here's a mnemonic to help you: Do you care a lot about grammar? I don't care, unless it has to do with commas (かま). Then I do flip out.
最近仕事が忙しくて、全然子供に構ってあげられてないんだよね。
Recently, I've been so busy with work that I haven't been able to spend any time with my kids at all.
君が僕のことをどう思おうと構わないけど、友達のことまで悪く言うのはやめてくれるかな？
I don't mind what you think about me, but could you please stop badmouthing my friends as well?
構ってちゃんにはなりたくないなあ。
I don't want to be an attention seeker.
「こちらの品は百万円ほどお高くなります。」「それでも構わないよ。それを頂くよ。」
"This one will cost about a million yen more." "I still don’t mind. I’ll take it."