La nave llegó al puerto.

Here nave means ship or vessel.

But nave does not always mean that. In Spanish, nave can also mean:

• spacecraft / spaceship
• a large industrial building or warehouse
• the nave of a church

So the exact meaning depends on context. Because the sentence also has puerto (port/harbour), the most natural meaning here is ship.

Because nave is a feminine noun in Spanish, so it takes the feminine article la.

• la nave
• una nave

This is something you usually just have to learn with the noun. The ending -e does not automatically tell you whether a noun is masculine or feminine.

Llegó is the preterite form of llegar (to arrive).

It means:

• arrived

More specifically, it is:

• 3rd person singular
• preterite
• so: he/she/it arrived

In this sentence, the subject is la nave, so llegó means the ship arrived.

The accent mark in llegó shows where the stress goes and also helps distinguish the form.

• llego = I arrive / I am arriving (present)
• llegó = he/she/it arrived (preterite)

So the accent is important: it changes both pronunciation and meaning.

The infinitive is llegar, meaning to arrive.

Some useful forms are:

• llego = I arrive
• llegas = you arrive
• llega = he/she/it arrives
• llegué = I arrived
• llegó = he/she/it arrived

Because in Spanish, a + el contracts to al.

So:

• a + el puerto → al puerto

This contraction is required in normal Spanish.

Compare:

• Voy al puerto. = I’m going to the port.
• Llegó al puerto. = It arrived at the port.

One important exception: if el is part of a proper name, you usually do not contract it.

• a El Escorial → not al Escorial

With llegar, Spanish often uses a to mean to or at, especially before a destination.

• llegar al puerto = to arrive at the port
• llegar a Madrid = to arrive in Madrid / arrive at Madrid

This is different from English, where we often say arrive at or arrive in. Spanish commonly uses llegar a.

Yes. Puerto can correspond to port and sometimes harbour, depending on context.

It can refer to:

• a seaport
• a harbour area
• a port in a broader commercial or nautical sense

In everyday learning, port is the safest basic translation.

In most modern Spanish, including most of Spain, ll is pronounced like y in some form, though the exact sound can vary by region.

So llegó is commonly pronounced roughly like:

• ye-GO

In some parts of Spain, it may sound a bit more like a soft j or dy sound, but for learners, treating ll like y is usually fine.

A simple approximate pronunciation is:

la NA-be ye-GO al PWER-to

A few notes:

• v in nave is pronounced much like b in Spanish
• ll in llegó is usually like y
• puerto is two syllables: puer-to
• the stress in llegó falls on the last syllable because of the accent mark

Yes. That is grammatically correct, but it is a different tense.

• La nave llegó al puerto = The ship arrived
• La nave ha llegado al puerto = The ship has arrived

In many parts of Spain, the present perfect (ha llegado) is especially common for recent past events connected to the present. The preterite (llegó) is also correct and often sounds more like a completed past event.

The normal word order here is:

• La nave llegó al puerto.

But Spanish allows some flexibility.

For example:

• Llegó la nave al puerto.
• Al puerto llegó la nave.

These alternatives may sound more literary, emphatic, or context-dependent. For a learner, the original order is the most neutral and natural.

Yes, you could say Llegó al puerto if the subject is already clear from context.

Spanish often omits the subject when it is understood. But including La nave is useful when:

• you want to make the subject explicit
• you are introducing it
• you want to avoid ambiguity

So both are possible:

• La nave llegó al puerto.
• Llegó al puerto.

The full version is clearer on its own.