Mi español

The other day, after a few seconds of chatting, a waiter asked me if I was from Spain.  After I stopped laughing, I thanked him for the compliment – I’ve certainly never had anyone confuse me for a native speaker (even one from another continent, where the language is quite different).  So I guess I must be making some progress with my Spanish.  But like anything, I have good days and bad days.  Sometimes I feel pretty articulate, and other times, I can’t seem to come up with the right word for anything.

I think my Spanish has actually gotten better now that I’ve focused more on trying to speak fluently than trying to speak properly.  For example, I hear lots of Ecuadorians not bother with the subjunctive when they probably should be using it, so I don’t see any reason why I should. 

I’m still puzzled by genders.  Adjectives are supposed to take the gender of the noun they are modifying.  But sometimes nouns of different genders get run together, as in “una botella de vino”, a bottle of wine.  “Botella” is feminine and “vino” is masculine.  But then if someone says “it’s cold”, referring to the bottle of wine, it seems like there’s no rhyme or reason as to which gender they assign to the adjective “cold” (frio/a).  So they might say "es fria" or "es frio".

Actually, the word “agua” has been a big source of confusion for all of us.  “Agua”, unlike most other Spanish words ending in “a”, is masculine.  So “the water” is “el agua”, not “la agua”.   Simple, right?  Just memorize the exception.  But in every day usage, adjectives modifying agua are always feminine.  So you have “agua fria” (cold water), “agua purificada” (purified water), “agua aromática” (herbal tea), etc.  Small bottles of water are called “aguacitas”, a feminine diminutive.  I’ve been asking Ecuadorians about this, and haven’t been able to get a straight answer.  We asked our waiter on the Galapagos cruise about it, and he was stumped.  Hours later, I heard him discussing it with the rest of the waiters, and none of them could come up with an explanation.

My reaction to all this is to keep on speaking and not worry too much about genders of adjectives.  But I’d love an explanation of what’s going on with “agua”.  Any help from our readers on this?