Mateo looks for the rabbit in the moon: Spanish A1
Tonight the moon is a thin arc. Mateo learns that it reflects the sun, that the cycle takes about four weeks, and that a Mexican story sees a rabbit in the dark patches.
Mateo busca el conejo en la luna
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About this article
What you'll learn
present tense, moon vocabulary, sentences with por eso
Mateo opens the window to see the rabbit from an old Mexican story, but the moon is only a waxing crescent. His grandmother explains that the moon has no light of its own: it reflects the sun. On a full moon the dark patches look like a rabbit or a face, and it is not a real animal. The cycle takes about four weeks. From Earth we always see the same face; the first photos of the other face come from a spacecraft. People left footprints on the moon, and with no wind they last many years. Tomorrow the bright edge will be a little larger.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
La luna está en el cielo
newthe moon is in the sky
Estar gives the place where something is. To say what something is like, Spanish switches to ser: es blanca.
A ready frame for saying where anything is: X está en Y.
vemos siempre la misma cara
newwe always see the same side
Vemos is the we form of ver. Siempre sits between the verb and the object, where English puts always before the verb.
The sentence carries the fact: the moon keeps one side turned towards us.
no tiene luz propia
newit has no light of its own
Tener in the present: tengo, tienes, tiene. Spanish negates with a single no before the verb: no tiene.
The frame no tiene + noun says something is missing, with no extra words.
Refleja la luz del sol
newit reflects the sun's light
The verb is reflejar, and refleja is its he/she/it form. It is a plain transitive verb, not a reflexive one, so no se belongs here.
It states why the moon shines at all: the light is the sun's, borrowed.
la noche no está oscura
newthe night is not dark
Estar + adjective for a state that changes. Oscura is the feminine form, agreeing with la noche; the masculine is oscuro.
The pair oscuro / oscura shows how every Spanish adjective follows its noun's gender.
el mar sube y baja
newthe sea rises and falls
Two verbs sharing one subject: sube (subir) and baja (bajar), both in the he/she/it form because el mar is singular.
The sentence carries a real fact: the moon pulls the water, and that is what a tide is.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Sky
el cielo
sky
El cielo, masculine. Nouns ending in -o are usually masculine, and cielo follows the rule. It also means heaven.
The place every other word in this text sits in.
Bright, shining
brillante
bright, shining
From the verb brillar, to shine. Adjectives ending in -e keep one form for both genders: un cielo brillante, una luna brillante.
The -e adjectives are the easy ones: no masculine and feminine to remember.
Light
la luz
light
La luz is feminine even though it ends in -z, and that ending is no guide to gender: el lápiz and el pez are masculine. Plural: las luces.
A word you have to learn together with its article, because the ending will not tell you.
Night
la noche
night
La noche is feminine. Por la noche means at night, and Spanish uses por for every part of the day: por la mañana, por la tarde, por la noche.
Three por la phrases cover any time of day you will need.
Dark
oscura
dark
Oscura is the feminine of oscuro, agreeing with la noche. Both spellings oscuro and obscuro exist in Spanish, and oscuro is the usual one.
Pairs with brillante as the light and the dark of the whole text.
Stars
las estrellas
stars
La estrella, las estrellas. Nouns ending in -a are usually feminine, and estrella follows that rule; the plural simply adds -s.
The moon's companions, and the other half of the night sky.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Ser and estar, one sentence apart
Es blanca y brillante
it is in the sky, it is white
Two neighbouring sentences use both verbs. Está en el cielo answers where; es blanca answers what it is like. Place and changing states take estar; qualities take ser.
The clearest ser and estar pair in the text, on the same subject and one sentence apart.
Double negative: no ... nunca
no se ve nunca
it is never seen from here
Spanish keeps both words: no before the verb and nunca after it. English allows only one negative, so it is never seen, but Spanish says no se ve nunca.
Dropping the no is the standard mistake for anyone coming from English.
Hay: there is, there are
no hay viento
there is no wind
Hay never changes: hay un conejo, hay huellas, no hay viento. It covers one thing and many things alike, and with plurals it takes no article.
One invariable word for what English splits into there is and there are.
Gente takes a singular verb
mucha gente ve un conejo
many people see a rabbit
La gente is grammatically singular, so the verb is ve, not ven: mucha gente ve. English people and Ukrainian люди are plural, which is what makes this slip so easy.
A collective noun that behaves like one person, and one of the commonest agreement errors.
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