Green Forest: Spanish Reading (A1)
Rosa has a permit for Muniellos and wants to see a squirrel. An A1 Spanish story about an old oak forest in Asturias.
Bosque verde
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About this article
What you'll learn
Forest words (roble, ardilla, seta, ciervo), se llama, se convierte, and huele.
Rosa wants to enter Muniellos, a large old oak forest in Asturias, in northern Spain. It is protected: only a few people enter each day, and they need a permit. Her father has the permit for today. She wants to see a squirrel. In the morning many birds sing more at dawn than at other hours; some people call this the dawn chorus. A squirrel climbs down headfirst and buries nuts for winter. It forgets plenty of them, and some forgotten nuts grow into new oaks. She sees a deer. Only males have large antlers; they lose them each year and grow new ones. The antlers of a large deer can weigh several kilograms. She leaves an old pair on the path. Near an oak is a red mushroom. In Spain the part we see is called a seta. Underground, many fungi have long thin threads that touch tree roots: the fungus gives water and minerals, and the tree gives sugar. Not every mushroom is safe to eat, so this one stays. A small river is cold in the shade. Roots hold the soil; without these trees, rain carries the soil toward the water. Rosa leaves with empty hands.
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.
El bosque es el hogar de muchos animales.
newThe forest is the home of many animals.
Hogar is a home in the warm sense, not a house you can buy: that is casa. Ser el hogar de is the normal way to say a place is home to something.
One frame that describes any habitat: el mar es el hogar de muchos peces.
Los pájaros cantan por la mañana.
newBirds sing in the morning.
Cantar is regular: canto, cantas, canta, cantamos, cantáis, cantan. Por la mañana is what you hear in Spain; en la mañana is the usual form across much of Latin America.
Birds really do sing most at first light, and Spanish has a name for it: el coro del amanecer.
Guardan nueces para el invierno.
newThey store nuts for the winter.
Guardar means to keep or put away, not to guard. The subject is dropped: Spanish leaves out ellas because -an already says who.
Squirrels hide the nuts in many separate spots and forget a good number of them, and those forgotten nuts grow into trees.
No todos los hongos son buenos para comer.
newNot all mushrooms are good to eat.
No todos means not all, which is different from ninguno, none. Bueno para plus an infinitive says what something is good for.
A real safety line, and the not all frame is one you will reuse constantly.
El aire en el bosque es fresco.
newThe air in the forest is fresh.
Fresco is cool and fresh, not cold: frío is cold. With air and water Spanish prefers fresco.
Fresco and frío are a pair learners mix up all the time, and the forest is the easiest place to remember the difference.
El bosque es importante para la Tierra.
newThe forest is important for the Earth.
Importante does not change for gender: el bosque es importante, la tierra es importante. Adjectives ending in -e work like this.
It sets up the reason that follows: the roots hold the soil, and without trees the rain carries it away.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
el bosque
the forest
Masculine: el bosque, los bosques. A bosque is woodland; a tropical jungle is la selva, and that pair matters when you read about Latin America.
The word the whole text turns on, and the bosque / selva split is a real distinction in Spanish.
los árboles
the trees
Masculine: el árbol, los árboles. Both forms keep a written accent, and the plural adds -es because the singular ends in a consonant.
It is the clearest example in the text of the -es plural after a consonant.
las ardillas
the squirrels
Feminine: la ardilla, las ardillas. Spanish uses one word for the animal whatever its sex, so a male squirrel is still la ardilla.
Grammatical gender is not the animal sex, and ardilla is the easiest place to see that.
los ciervos
the deer
Masculine: el ciervo, los ciervos. Antlers are las astas or la cornamenta; cuernos are the permanent horns of a cow or a goat, and deer shed theirs every year.
Only the males grow them, and asta versus cuerno is a distinction Spanish actually makes.
los ríos
the rivers
Masculine: el río, los ríos. The accent on the i splits the two syllables, ri-o; without it the word would be read as one.
The accent is not decoration: here it marks where the two vowels split into separate syllables.
el oxígeno
the oxygen
Masculine: el oxígeno. The stress falls on -xí-, and the written accent marks it. English stresses the first syllable of oxygen instead.
Trees make it and people breathe it, which is the whole last section of the text in one word.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
el bosque, la hierba, los árboles, las hojas
the forest, the grass, the trees, the leaves
The definite article carries gender and number at once: el (masc. sing.), la (fem. sing.), los (masc. pl.), las (fem. pl.). Spanish also uses it for general statements where English uses no article at all: Los árboles producen oxígeno means Trees produce oxygen.
That second use is the one English speakers keep dropping, and this text is full of it.
el árbol, la hoja
the tree, the leaf
Nouns in -o are usually masculine and nouns in -a usually feminine, but usually is not always: el día and el mapa are masculine, la mano is feminine. Words ending in anything else, like el árbol and la flor, simply have to be learned with their article.
Learn every noun together with el or la, because the ending alone will not tell you.
el pez, los peces
the fish, the fish (plural)
Most plurals just add -s, or -es after a consonant (árbol, árboles). But a final -z becomes -c before -es: el pez, los peces; la nuez, las nueces; la vez, las veces.
Both pez and nuez appear in this text, so the rule pays off immediately.
Huele a tierra y a plantas.
It smells of earth and plants.
Oler is doubly irregular: the o becomes ue and an h appears in front of it. Huelo, hueles, huele, but olemos and oléis go back to the plain o. Oler a means to smell of.
Nobody guesses huele from oler, and the phrase oler a is how Spanish describes any smell.
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