feminine and masculine nouns

Question

according to lesson 1.3 things that end in a are feminine and thus should be preceded by la so why is agua preceded by el...el agua and not la agua...?????? thanx

Answer 1

Whenever you have a feminine noun with a stressed "a" sound at the beginning (hacha, agua, hámaca...) it uses el as its article. (el hacha, el agua, el hámaca). To modify them, you would still use feminine adjectives (el hacha peligrosa, el agua fría, el hámaca roja). Yes, you would switch to las for the plural. Why? try to say them! la agua? sounds like lagua = lagoon

Answer 2

I was taught is that agua is actually a feminine noun. They use el, because la agua just doesn't sound right.

Answer 3

That "rule" has many exceptions, notably words like "la mano" the hand and many, many more. If you click on the More tab you can go to the Refenence section, where they have an article on the use of fem/masc articles.

What rule? "Mano" is one of the rare words in "-o" that are feminine (words ending in "-a" are much harder to predict). Check the rule provided by Gocika, because "agua" is indeed a feminine word.

Answer 4

That "rule" has many exceptions, notably words like "la mano" the hand and many, many more. If you click on the More tab you can go to the Refenence section, where they have an article on the use of fem/masc articles.

I have added the link:

link text

I have found it best to forget the o/a rule and just memorize the article as if it were part of the word, such as "ellibro" for el libro = book etc. Good luck.