Inklingo

How to Say "to ship" in Spanish

The Spanish word forto shipis embarcarA2 level. This is a very common word in everyday Spanish.

English → SpanishA2
verbA2
loading goods onto a transport vehicle
A person stepping from a wooden dock onto a small sailboat.

Examples

Los pasajeros deben embarcar por la puerta cuatro.

Passengers must board through gate four.

Empezaremos a embarcar el equipaje en diez minutos.

We will start loading the luggage in ten minutes.

El capitán dio la orden de embarcar inmediatamente.

The captain gave the order to board immediately.

The 'C' to 'QU' Spelling Swap

To keep the hard 'K' sound, the 'c' changes to 'qu' whenever the next letter is 'e'. This happens in the 'yo' form of the past tense (embarqué) and all forms of the present wish/command mood (embarque).

Using 'a' with Vehicles

When you say you are boarding a specific vehicle, you usually don't need a preposition directly after the verb, but if you're talking about the action of getting people onto something, you might use 'a' for the people: 'embarcar a los pasajeros'.

Spelling in the Past

Mistake:Yo embarcé ayer.

Correction: Yo embarqué ayer. (In Spanish, 'ce' sounds like an 's' or 'th', so we need 'que' to keep the 'K' sound from the original word 'embarcar').

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