Word
A tripulação prefere que nós embarquemos sem a bagagem.
Meaning
The crew prefers us to board without the luggage.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of A tripulação prefere que nós embarquemos sem a bagagem.
nós
we
preferir
to prefer
sem
without
que
that (conjunction)
Questions & Answers about A tripulação prefere que nós embarquemos sem a bagagem.
Why does this sentence use embarquemos instead of the normal present tense embarcamos?
Because of the phrase prefere que (prefers that). When a sentence uses a verb of desire or preference like preferir, and the person doing the action changes—from the crew (a tripulação) to us (nós)—the second verb must be in the present subjunctive form.
Why is embarquemos spelled with a qu instead of a c?
The base verb is embarcar. In the present subjunctive, -ar verbs take -e endings. However, if we just swapped the a for an e to make "embarcemos", the c would suddenly sound like an "s". To keep the hard "k" sound of embarcar, Portuguese changes the c to qu before the letter e.
"The crew" implies multiple people, so why is the verb prefere in the singular form?
A tripulação is a collective noun. Even though it represents a group of people, the grammatical word itself is singular, just like "the team" (a equipa) or "the family" (a família). Therefore, it must take the singular verb prefere.
Why is there an a before bagagem?