Why el agua instead of la agua?
Friday January 6, 2006
Both agua and águila, which mean "water" and "eagle," respectively, are feminine nouns. Yet we say el agua and el águila, making exceptions to the rule that la is used with feminine nouns. The reason has to do with pronunciation — la agua would sound the same as lagua and might be confusing. But language is seldom logical, so don't try substituting el for la whenever a word that starts with a- follows. Learn more...
Comments
what about abolicion, it begins with a but it is LA
The explanation here lacks something.
The way it works is in Spanish we say EL agua instead of LA agua because of sound, which is explained there.
However, it fails to recognize something.
The only words where this happens are words that begin with a STRESSED a, where the word has its stress. Agua and Águila both have the stress on the first syllable, the A, yet when they are feminine, you still use EL in front of them. If you put adjectives behind them, then you say agua blancA or águila rojA.
Another word that works like that is ALMA, also feminine.
Basically, if the word is stressed on the first syllable, and it happens to be an A, then you use EL as the article, even when the noun is feminine.
Abolicion, as giovanna is asking, is a feminine noun, yes (cion ending always feminine), BUT, the A is not stressed. The stress is on the ó on abolición.
So there, explained.
Don’t know if it helps, but the way I was taught it was both “agua” and “aguila” come from Latin (”acqua” and “acquila” if I don’t badly remember.) The article would make them “illa acquilla” for instance, but after evolution in the Middle Ages of Romanic languages, the article ille-illa-illum changed to el/la. But because “la agua” was a case of cacophony, it took exceptionally the first part of “illa”, el. So technically speaking, it is a variation of the feminine article, instead of the masculine one (?) Can’t vouch for this explanation, though, so if anyone knows more about this subject, I’d be glad to hear about it.
um… y dont we just blow up mexico and get it over with. and get our damb jobs back from the spics!!!!
and Spain too while you’re at it…
…If I had a shotgun, I’d hunt you down. Literaly.