confusion of el or la
Hi SpanishDict - Is it 'la amiga' or 'el amiga' in a book it was written that to avoid the pronunciation of "aaa continously" in the word 'la amiga' we change it to 'el amiga' , but i think this must be an exception coz el amiga is not written anywhere. so is it 'la amiga' or 'el amiga'
6 Answers
Some words like "agua" and "hacha" change to a male article in the singular form because the tonic accent falls on the first "a" in each word. Definitely not the case with a word like "amiga" though. In this case the emphasis is stressed on the "i", so there is no need to change the article and you will never see this in Spanish apart from the name of the Commodore already mentioned.
The definite article,masculine,singular el replaces the definite article,feminine,singular la:
-if the feminine noun begins with the stressed vowel a-:
El agua = The water
-if if the feminine noun begins with the consonant h- + a stressed vowel:
El hada = The fair
El articulo definido,masculino,singular el sustituye el articulo definido,feminino,singular la:
-si el sustantivo feminino empienza con la vocal enfatizada a-:
El agua = The water
-si el sustantivo feminino empienza con la consonante h-+ la vocal enfatizada a:
-El hada = The fair
It's always "la amiga" when you're talking about "the (lady) friend", since amiga is a feminine noun. The male counterpart is "amigo" -> "el amigo". Also note that there are some masculine nouns that end in an "a", like "el agua".
Now, if you're talking about the Commodore Amiga PC, in that case it's "el Amiga". 
Yes, this is done to avoid the reoccurring of the a sound, but I think that it is la amiga in this case. It may also be regional.
la amiga
It would be la amiga because amiga is feminine. You can tell if a word is feminine or masculine by the letter the word ends in. If it ends with an "o" it is masculine, so you would use "el" and if it ends in an "a" the word would be feminine, therefore you would use "la". Hope this helped!
