la arma or el arma

Question

I'm a Spanish beginner, started with Duolingo some weeks ago. Now I get stuck with one exercise: it's asked to select the right solution for: the weapon is mine. You must select BOTH of the following given solutions to get it right: El arma es mía
La arma es mía

I understood the following till now: arma is in Spanish a feminine noun, therefore it should be LA arma. But there is a second rule: if la is before a stressed a... (word beginning with a) then the article will change to el. As good as I understand the spelling till now, the first a in arma is the stressed one, therefore it must be EL?

My questions now: 1. is it LA arma or EL arma 2. what is the proper rule behind the right solution 3. then it cannot be la AND el, both as correct solutions, right?

Thanks for any enlightenment in my EL-LA confusion.

PS. I tried to search in several dictionaries and translation sites. El is the one given most of the times, but without a reason/rule of the translation.

Hola Thomas. Welcome to SpanishDict. Please complete your profile as it pertains to language. Thanks. - rac1, Jun 23, 2014

Answer 1

Just to add some pizzaz to this...

Toma el arma, la arma y (la) dispara.

:) - FELIZ77, Jun 23, 2014

Diste en el clavo, no sabia como explicar eso. - GexThunderstrom, Jun 25, 2014

;-) - chileno, Jun 25, 2014

Answer 2

In this occasion the correct phrase is: El arma es mía.

Depends of the occasion.

When you talking about more weapons is: Las armas. (Las armas son mías)

La arma es mía is incorrect because is only one weapon.

Are you understandme?

Good luck.

"Do you understand me" :) - budmcq2, Jun 23, 2014

:) - ian-hill, Jun 23, 2014

It's not the occasion, but the combination of the two consecutive a's that requires the useof the article 'el'. When 'arma' is preceded by an adjective, use 'la' : la preciosa arma... - Castor77, Jun 23, 2014

are you understanding me? - chileno, Jun 23, 2014

Arma is male and female, depends. - GexThunderstrom, Jun 24, 2014

Muchas gracias por sus traducciones. - GexThunderstrom, Jun 24, 2014

Answer 3

The word is feminine : arma blanca, las armas blancas, but when the first syllabe that begins with an a is stressed, we use the article el instead of la. It is the same with el ama de casa, el agua, el águila... and the corresponding adjectives take the feminine form : el agua fresca

Arma blanca es correcto pero en otro contexto: El asaltante atacó con arma blanca, por eso la victima sobrevivió al altercado. - GexThunderstrom, Jun 23, 2014