Transport or Transportation in Spanish: 19 words

Transport in Spanish, or transportation if that's the word you use, is el transporte either way. It starts with the basics: coche, tren, avión, autobús, all covered in our Spanish travel guide. What that guide does not cover is the vocabulary around the trip itself: conductor (driver), pasajero (passenger), tráfico (traffic), taquilla (ticket office), andén (platform), and aparcamiento (parking), plus vehicles that miss the beginner list: motorcycle, truck, boat, ship, helicopter. Vocabcord's A2 Spanish corpus groups all 19 of these under one theme, each with audio. Here is the full list, plus how to say which mode you took, and the two words that split by vehicle size and the two that split by English dialect.

The transport words, with audio

These are the 19 transport-theme phrases from Vocabcord's A2 Spanish set, the layer above the basic vehicles in our travel guide. Tap the play button on any row to hear it.

The trip itself: driver, passenger, and the words around it

A vehicle alone does not get you anywhere; six words in this set describe the experience of the trip rather than the machine. El conductor is the driver and el pasajero the passenger; both default to the masculine in the dictionary, though la conductora and la pasajera are the everyday feminine forms. El tráfico is traffic, la taquilla the ticket office, and el andén the platform you wait on. El aparcamiento covers parking generally, a street spot or a whole lot.

By car, by train, by plane: how do you say the mode?

Spanish marks the way you travel with one small word: en. Put it in front of the vehicle and you have your answer: en coche (by car), en tren (by train), en avión (by plane), en autobús (by bus), en bicicleta (by bicycle). The pattern runs through our corpus at every level: Me desplazo al trabajo en tren (I commute to work by train), Fuimos en avión (we took a plane), Monto en bicicleta (I ride a bicycle), Se ofreció a llevarme en coche (he offered me a ride, literally he offered to take me by car). Comparing two modes just repeats the pattern: Fuimos en autobús en lugar de en tren (we took the bus instead of the train).

Walking breaks it. There is no en pie in Spanish, and inside Vocabcord's corpus a pie never shows up for this either. The word that actually appears is andando, paired with ir (to go) instead of en plus a noun: Normalmente voy andando (I usually walk), Vamos andando en vez de ir en coche (let's walk instead of driving). One preposition covers every vehicle in the list above; walking gets its own construction.

Metro: is it the subway or the underground?

Spanish keeps one word for the whole system: el metro. English splits it by country. Americans call it the subway, so cogimos el metro para ir al centro means we took the subway downtown. The British call the same thing the underground, so el metro es rápido y barato means the underground is fast and cheap. One Spanish word, two correct English answers, depending on which side of the Atlantic is asking.

Barca or barco: which word for boat?

Spanish splits boat by size in a way English does not bother to. La barca is the small one, rowed or paddled, the kind that crosses a lake: cruzamos el lago en barca, we crossed the lake by boat. El barco is the larger vessel, a ship that crosses an ocean: el barco cruzó el océano, the ship sailed across the ocean. The gender flips with the size: la for the small one, el for the large one.

Gas station or petrol station? Same Spanish word.

Wherever Spanish is spoken, a fuel stop is la gasolinera, regardless of what English calls it. Americans say gas station, the British say petrol station; the Spanish name comes from gasolina, the fuel itself, and skips the dialect split entirely. Paramos en la gasolinera means we stopped at the gas station, or the petrol station, depending on which side of the ocean is reading.

Keep the words moving

Nineteen words is a short list until a real trip asks for several of them at once: the driver, the platform, the traffic, the seat belt you buckle before you go. Vocabcord does not add a study schedule to keep them; it uses the one you already have. Every time you plug in your phone to charge, one phrase plays out loud, drawn from your level and spaced so a word returns right before it fades. Get Vocabcord on the App Store and let the transport words settle in a charge at a time.

Common questions

How do you say transport in Spanish?

El transporte is the general word. To name a specific mode, Spanish reaches for the vehicle itself: coche (car), tren (train), autobús (bus), and avión (plane) from our Spanish travel guide, plus motocicleta (motorcycle), camión (truck), barco (ship) and helicóptero (helicopter) from this page.

How do you say transportation in Spanish?

The same word, el transporte. Transport and transportation translate identically in Spanish. The two spellings are only an English dialect split, British transport against American transportation, and Spanish never makes that split.

What are the types of transport in Spanish?

Coche (car), autobús (bus), tren (train), and avión (plane) cover the everyday modes. This page adds motocicleta (motorcycle), camión (truck), barca (small boat), barco (ship), and helicóptero (helicopter), each with audio in the table above.

How do you say driver and passenger in Spanish?

Conductor is driver and pasajero is passenger. Both have everyday feminine forms, conductora and pasajera, even though the dictionary entry defaults to the masculine.

Is it a gas station or a petrol station in Spanish?

Both translate to the same word. La gasolinera covers gas station in American English and petrol station in British English alike; the Spanish name comes from gasolina, the fuel itself.

Is the Spanish word for subway the same as underground?

Yes. El metro covers both; subway is the American term and underground the British term for the same system, and Spanish does not distinguish between them.

How do you say 'by car' or 'by train' in Spanish?

Put en in front of the vehicle: en coche (by car), en tren (by train), en avión (by plane), en autobús (by bus). Comparing two modes repeats the same word for each one, as in fuimos en autobús en lugar de en tren (we took the bus instead of the train).

How do you say 'on foot' in Spanish?

Spanish drops the en + vehicle pattern for walking and uses andando with ir (to go) instead: voy andando (I go on foot, or I walk). Normalmente voy andando means I usually walk.