Sustantivos Irregulares

1
Sustantivos Irregulares

• Identifying Items
• Español III, p 42-43

2
Feminine Nouns that begin with a or ha

• If a noun is feminine and begins with a stressed
  a or the silent h followed by a stressed a, it
  takes the masculine definite article el or the
  indefinite article un.
• The noun is still considered feminine and
  therefore uses feminine adjectives, the article
  is changed just to help with pronunciation.

3
Feminine Nouns continued

• Translation Its too hard to say and/or
  understand the back-to-back sounds of a (for
  example la agua sounds like lagua, which is not a
  word!) To fix this problem, the masculine
  article is used in the singular form only.
• El agua, las aguas
• Un águila, unas águilas

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List

• The following is a list of feminine nouns that
  use masculine singular articles.
• El agua, las aguaswater
• El águila, las águilaseagle
• El área, las áreasarea
• El arma, las armasweapon
• El hacha, las hachasax
• El ala, las alaswing
• El hambrehunger

5
Nouns that end in a

• Several nouns in Spanish end in a but are
  masculine. These come from Greek roots. They
  take the definite articles el los, and the
  indefinite articles un unos.
• El/La radio can be either masculine or feminine
  depending on the region.
• The opposite is true of la mano which is feminine
  although it ends in o.
• La foto is feminine because it comes from the
  feminine noun la fotografía.

6
Masculine nouns that end in a

• These nouns ending in a are masculine.
• El clima climate
• El día day
• El drama drama
• El mapa map
• El planeta planet
• El poema poem
• El programa program
• El sistema system
• El telegrama telegram
• El tema theme