Páramo and frailejones: easy Spanish reading from Colombia (A1)
An A1 Spanish reading about the Sumapaz páramo in Colombia: the fog, the frailejón plants and the water that reaches Bogotá, with nuestro, mi, su and tu running through the text.
Nuestro páramo y sus frailejones
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A girl describes the páramo that begins just above her village in the mountains of Colombia. Almost all of its water comes from rain. The páramo is almost always in fog, and the frailejón plants also take a little of that fog water with their leaves. The moss and the dark soil hold the water and release it slowly all year; that is how the rivers start, and even Bogotá draws water from the páramos.
El páramo es un lugar frío y verde, encima del bosque, donde ya no crecen los árboles. Nuestro páramo casi siempre está en la niebla, y nuestras mañanas son grises y húmedas.
En nuestro páramo crecen los frailejones. Un frailejón tiene un tronco grueso, y sus hojas son largas y suaves. Sus flores son amarillas. Su nombre recuerda la palabra "fraile": de lejos, en la niebla, los frailejones parecen frailes en fila.
Casi toda el agua del páramo viene de la lluvia. Las hojas de los frailejones tienen unos pelos blancos muy finos. Esos pelos también toman un poco de agua de la niebla. Después esa agua baja por su tronco hasta el suelo.
El suelo de nuestro páramo es una esponja. Su musgo y su tierra negra guardan el agua, y después el agua sale poco a poco, durante todo el año. Así nacen nuestros ríos.
Mi abuela dice que el páramo es nuestra despensa de agua. Nuestros vecinos beben esa agua, y Bogotá también recibe agua de los páramos.
Los frailejones crecen muy despacio. Mi profesora repite su regla favorita: nuestros pies caminan por el sendero, y nuestras manos no tocan las plantas.
¿Y tú? ¿De dónde viene tu agua? ¿Cómo son tus montañas o tus ríos? ¿Cuál es el lugar favorito de tu familia?
About this article
What you'll learn
Possessive adjectives: the four forms of nuestro/a/os/as, mi, tu and su with no gender marking, the several meanings of su, the difference between tu and tú, and possession with de.
A girl describes the páramo that begins just above her village in the mountains of Colombia. Almost all of its water comes from rain. The páramo is almost always in fog, and the frailejón plants also take a little of that fog water with their leaves. The moss and the dark soil hold the water and release it slowly all year; that is how the rivers start, and even Bogotá draws water from the páramos.
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.
nuestra despensa de agua
newour water pantry
A despensa is the pantry where a household keeps its food. The grandmother calls the páramo that because it stores water and hands it back slowly. Note nuestra, not nuestro: despensa is feminine.
It is a good model of how an everyday word describes a landscape, as in el bosque es nuestra farmacia.
poco a poco
newlittle by little
Poco a poco is a fixed expression meaning "little by little" or "gradually". It never changes form, so pocos a pocos is not possible.
It is one of the most common everyday phrases: Poco a poco aprendo español.
de lejos
newfrom a distance
De lejos means "from far away". Its pair is de cerca, "close up". Both are fixed expressions and do not change form.
You need them whenever you describe how something looks from different distances: De cerca es diferente.
Así nacen nuestros ríos
newThis is how our rivers are born
Spanish uses nacer, "to be born", for rivers: El río nace en la montaña. It is the ordinary word, not a poetic one. Así means "this way" or "like this".
Nacer with rivers shows up in every geography text: El Ebro nace en Cantabria.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
el páramo
el páramo
páramo: cold high-altitude moorland
A páramo is a cold, damp landscape high in the Andes, above the treeline. It is not a desert: it is full of plants and holds a great deal of water.
It is a key word for the geography of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, and it explains where Andean cities such as Bogotá, Quito and Cuenca get their water.
la niebla
la niebla
fog, mist
Niebla is fog. Spanish says estar en la niebla, "to be in the fog", or hace niebla, "it is foggy". In the text the fog is not just weather: it is also one source of water for the plants.
It is basic weather vocabulary, and here it helps explain how the páramo works.
los frailejones
los frailejones
frailejones, the páramo plants
A frailejón is the plant that defines the páramo: a thick trunk topped by a rosette of long, soft leaves. The name echoes fraile, "friar": the usual explanation is that in the mist, from a distance, the plants look like hooded figures.
It is not a textbook word, but it is very common in Colombia whenever water and the mountains come up.
la esponja
una esponja
sponge
Esponja means sponge. Here it is a comparison: the páramo soil soaks water up and lets it out slowly, the way a sponge does. The noun is feminine, hence una esponja.
You need it both at home (la esponja del baño) and in descriptions of landscapes.
el musgo
Su musgo
moss
Musgo is moss, the low green plant without flowers that grows as a carpet on damp ground and stones. In the páramo the moss holds water like a sponge.
It is a common word in descriptions of forests, mountains and old walls: una piedra con musgo.
el sendero
el sendero
footpath, trail
A sendero is a narrow path for walkers, not a road for cars. El camino is close in meaning but broader, and can also be a road.
It is on every sign in the mountains and in parks: sendero señalizado.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
nuestro has four forms
nuestras mañanas son grises
our mornings are grey
Nuestro agrees with the thing owned, not with the owners. That is why the text carries all four forms: nuestro páramo (masculine singular), nuestra despensa (feminine singular), nuestros ríos (masculine plural), nuestras mañanas (feminine plural). The owners are the same people throughout; only the following noun changes the form.
This is the main difference from English our, which has a single form.
mi, tu, su: singular and plural only
sus hojas son largas
its leaves are long
Mi, tu and su have only two forms, singular and plural. They do not show gender. The text has su tronco (masculine) and sus hojas (feminine): the possessive is the same word, and only the number changes, su before one thing and sus before several.
Learners often copy the nuestro/nuestra pattern and invent a feminine form; there is none.
su covers several meanings
Su nombre recuerda la palabra
its name echoes the word
One su does the work of his, her, its, their, the polite your for usted, and the plural your for ustedes, which in Colombia and across Latin America is the ordinary plural you, with no politeness attached. Context decides, not the form. Here su nombre is the plant's name, because the previous sentence is about the frailejón. When context is not enough, Spanish spells it out: el nombre de la planta.
Su is a frequent source of misreadings, so checking the context every time pays off.
tu without an accent, tú with one
tu agua
your water
These are two different words. Tu with no written accent is the possessive and stands before a noun: tu agua, tus ríos. Tú with an accent is the subject pronoun "you": ¿Y tú? The closing paragraph of the text has both, one after the other.
The accent is not decoration here: it separates "your" from "you".
possession with de
el lugar favorito de tu familia
your family's favourite place
Spanish has no ending like the English apostrophe s. Two nouns are joined by de, and the owner comes second: el lugar de tu familia, el suelo de nuestro páramo, las hojas de los frailejones. De also covers relations other than ownership, such as origin: el agua de la niebla.
The order is the reverse of English, so the phrase has to be flipped deliberately at first.
frailejón to frailejones: the accent mark disappears
Un frailejón tiene un tronco grueso
a frailejón has a thick trunk
Frailejón carries a written accent in the singular because the stress falls on the last syllable and the word ends in -n. Adding -es keeps the stress on the same syllable, but that syllable is now second from the end, and words like that ending in -s take no written accent: frailejones. The same happens with canción / canciones, avión / aviones, corazón / corazones.
Nouns ending in -ón are extremely common, so this one rule prevents a long list of spelling mistakes.
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