Why agua is masculine?
Why does agua have masculine article when it ends in an a?
6 Answers
..........................El Agua not La Agua...................................
This is taken from our own Span¡shD!ct Reference page in re Definite Articles:
Exceptions
When a feminine and singular noun begins with a stressed á or ha, the masculine definite article is used instead to aid in pronunciation. When the same noun is plural, the regular feminine article is used.
Exceptional Definite Articles
Singular ? Plural
el águila ? las águilas
el alma ? las almas
el agua ? las aguas
el hambre ? las hambres
To see the entire Reference Article,
"agua" is a feminine noun, but "el" is used to prevent two "a" sounds together. There are other feminine nouns beginning with an "a" that are handled in the same manner.
I recommend a quick search on the forum for "agua". There are many details in the discussions.
Welcome to the forum!
In case this seems strange to you, we do a very similar thing in English. Example: we eat an apple but we eat meat. We eat an orange but we eat a tomato. The only reason we use an instead of a is because it sound better. If you look in a grimmer book you will find the rule for this but if you are a native speaker of English you will never make this mistake. El agua sounds better to Spanish speaking people and that is that, you can look up the rule- it is very logical but the bottom line, that is how they say it.
It's all for pronounciation--the two a's would meld together othwerise. The word for harp (el arpa) is exactly the same way. It's much easier to say out loud--give it a try and see what I mean! 
There are excellent explanations of why agua is masculine. So now I ask two more questions.
- Why is it "la mano"? No problem here with pronunciation.
- Why do we have "va a hacer algo"? Here we have three "a" sounds in a row and no rule change here.
and why does un bebé (a baby) have no feminine? No hay una bebé!
