A word like ‘agua’ can really throw a spanner in the works when you are learning Spanish. You just about get to grips with masculine and feminine, and how to spot them, then a word like ‘agua‘ comes along. It’s not like the ‘la mano’, which is one of the few feminine words that ends in an ‘o’. It’s a totally different situation and here’s how this word works…
El agua is actually feminine but Spanish doesn’t like ‘la‘ directly in front of stressed ‘a‘ or stressed ‘ha‘ so it changes to ‘el‘.
What I mean by ‘stressed‘ is where the strongest or longest sound sits. It may have an accent or not have an accent but regardless, the letter is ‘stressed‘ if you say that letter stronger or longer than the rest of the word.
Even when you have to replace ‘la‘ with ‘el‘ the word remains feminine and any gender agreement would be feminine.
- For example: El agua limpia (The clean water.)
There are more words that start with a stressed ‘a’. For example:
- el área (the area)
- el aula (the classroom)
- el águila (the eagle)
- el arte (the art)
- el ave (the bird)
- el aura (the aura)
- el arpa (the harp)
- el asma (the asthma)
- el arma (the weapon)
As well well as words that begin with a stressed ‘a‘, the same happens with a word that starts with a stressed ‘ha’:
For example:
- el hada (the fairy)
- el hambre (the hunger)
- el hacha (the axe)
- el habla (the speech)
You’re probably asking, ‘Does this only happen to the ‘la’?
The answer is no! This is also the case when using ‘una‘ in front… it would be ‘un agua‘. You see it’s all about the sound… having the ‘la‘ or ‘una‘ in front of the stressed ‘a‘ or ‘ha‘ doesn’t sound fluid in Spanish and so they replace them with ‘el‘ and ‘un‘.
The good news is…
In the plural, these words would be normal… ‘las aguas‘ and ‘unas aguas‘. This is because the ‘s‘ splits the sound and so it flows much better.
Here’s a few examples with ‘aula’ (classroom):
| El aula pequeña |
| Un aula pequeña |
| Las aulas pequeñas |
| Unas aulas pequeñas |
At the end of the day…
When it comes to this special type of word, there is a good chance that you will forget to use ‘el‘ or ‘un‘ and that’s fine. You’ll still be understood! However, when you see or hear ‘el agua‘ etc, you’ll likely think, ‘ah yes, I remember’ and bit by bit you’ll start to use it properly.
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