Articles are words that define a noun as specific or unspecific. Consider the following examples:. After the long day, the cup of tea tasted particularly good. After a long day, a cup of tea tastes particularly good. The thing is that in Spanish every single noun has a gender: feminine or masculine. If you have studied some Spanish you are painfully aware of this. Like nouns, articles in Spanish also have genders. Articles in Spanish take on both the gender and the number of the noun.
Not too bad, right? I did ask some Spanish-speakers about it, but they just simply said "it doesn't sound right" and nothing more.
Through your explanation, I understood about the stress and other things now :. Yes, it is one of those little things you learn with time and practice, but as you see by other natives' answers, even some of us get it wrong and if you say "la agua" we would be able to understand you anyway.
I must say that even if "una agua" is not used but still correct, that is not the case for "la agua", though! I did not link to it before because I thought it would not be that useful since it is in Spanish, but in the official Spanish dictionary in the FAQ section, actually , they mention it:. I wouldn't have been able to follow the Spanish explanation without your English explanation, but I think I understood. I thought it was interesting that if you intersperse a word between the "the" and "agua", such as "misma", then, "agua" reverts back to "la" as in "la misma agua" but, it makes sense when you understand that you only switch "la" out to avoid the double vowel.
I still don't understand why it was such a big deal for Spanish speakers that they needed to avoid the double "a". It makes me wonder if there's a word, "lagua" or if it's just that in fluent Spanish, "la" is essentially said without any pause between it and its noun.
I don't know if I'm explaining myself well, but regardless, it doesn't really matter because I understand how to use the rule now. I think that it is mostly about some old rule establishing it was like that and then it passing on generations. I was going to say that we don't do this in English. But, apparently, there are two different ways of pronouncing the word, "the. One version is usually placed in front of words starting with a vowel, and the other version is put in front of words starting with a consonant.
And, of course, we add the letter "n" to "a" when it proceeds a word that begins with a vowel sound, such as "an apple" rather than "a banana". And, I thought Spanish was obnoxious with this, but apparently, English is even more obnoxious with this kind of stuff.
Babella Would you mind providing a few examples of the "el agua'. I'm not familiar with it, and if I could see it in context, I might be able to understand it better. If the word is describing a female person, then the word is feminine and vice versa. In most cases, el is used for masculine nouns and la is used for feminine nouns. Another rule supersedes this, and that is when the feminine noun is singular and starts with a stressed a- or ha- sound, like the words agua, meaning water, or hambre, meaning hunger.
The reason the definite article becomes el is mostly a matter of how it sounds to say la agua and la hambre and the clunkiness of the "double-a" sounds repeating. It sounds more definitive to say el agua and el hambre. There is a similar grammar rule in English about the use of the "an" versus "a. The English rule states that "an," which is an indefinite article modifying the noun, comes before nouns that have a vowel sound at the beginning of the word and "a" comes before consonant-starting nouns.
Notice the substitution of el for la takes place when it comes immediately before words starting with an "a" sound. If the feminine noun is modified by adjectives that follow the noun in the sentence, the feminine noun retains the masculine article.
The thing to remember is that words that are feminine remain feminine. The reason why this matters is if the word becomes plural, the word goes back to using the feminine definite article. In this case, the definite article becomes las. It sounds fine to say las arcas since the "s" in las breaks up the "double-a" sound.
Another example is las amas de casa. If a word intervenes between the definite article and the noun, la is used. If the accent of the noun is not on the first syllable, the definite article la is used with singular feminine nouns when they begin with a- or ha-. The substitution of el for la does not occur before adjectives that begin with a stressed a- or ha- , the rule only applies to nouns, despite the "double-a" sound. There a few exceptions to the rule that el substitutes for la immediately before a noun that begins with a stressed a- or ha-.
Note, the letters of the alphabet, called letras in Spanish, which is a feminine noun, are all feminine. Most grammarians consider it correct for feminine words to take the masculine indefinite article un instead of una under the same conditions where la is changed to el. It is for the same reason la is changed to el , to eliminate the "double-a" sound of the two words together.
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