Learn the answer to the question 'Why is it el agua and not la agua?'
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| Ask a teacher, lesson 17 - Why do you say el agua if agua ends with an a? |
| Hi everybody! Rosa here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Spanish questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| Why do you say el agua if agua ends with an a? Shouldn’t it be feminine? |
| You may have already learned that with most Spanish nouns, words that end in -a are usually feminine and words that end in -n, or -o are usually masculine. |
| However, the word agua “water” ends in -a but we used the article el to make el agua, “the water.” So, why do we do this? |
| The reason is simpler than you think. Every time a feminine word starts with the letter a with a strong accent, the preceding article is masculine. |
| So, feminine words beginning with a strong a like agua, águila, área, hacha, and alma will use the article el. |
| Let’s do some examples so you can learn how to use these nouns and their articles correctly. |
| First up, El águila vigila el agua. meaning “The eagle guards the water.” |
| We change the definite article the same way we change the indefinite article una to un. |
| Like in-- Tengo un hacha. Tengo una hacha. meaning “I have an axe.” |
| Both are correct but un is preferred as the word hacha has a strong a sound. |
| However, when we use demonstratives such as este, ese, and aquel meaning “this,” that,” and “those” respectively, or determiner adjectives such as todo, mucho, poco and otro meaning “everything” “a lot of,” “a bit of ” and “other,” respectively, the rule is no longer used, and these words use their feminine forms. |
| Take the example, De esta agua no beberé. meaning “I won’t drink this water.” We used the word este “this” which is changed to esta to match the real gender of the noun. |
| And remember that because these words are truly feminine, everything else that complements the word uses the feminine form-- |
| For example, El agua fría me encanta. “I love cold water” So, even though we changed the article, we keep the adjective fría meaning “cold” feminine to match the true gender of the noun. |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting, right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them! |
| ¡Hasta luego! “See you later!” |
Comments
Hide