My grandmother worked with letters of lead
An A2 Spanish reading in the imperfect: a small print shop in Zamora, a wooden type case, and where caja alta and caja baja come from.
Mi abuela trabajaba con letras de plomo
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The narrator remembers Pilar, a grandmother who worked as a compositor in a small print shop in Zamora. Every letter was a separate piece of lead, and they all sat in a large wooden case: capitals in the upper part, small letters, numbers and spaces in the lower one. That is where the Spanish terms caja alta and caja baja come from. The type stood mirrored and printed the right way round, while the spacing pieces sat lower and left no ink. The text runs almost entirely in the imperfect.
Los tipos estaban en unas cajas de madera muy grandes. La parte de arriba guardaba las mayúsculas. La parte de abajo guardaba las minúsculas, los números y los espacios. Por eso en la imprenta todavía se dice caja alta y caja baja.
Mi abuela conocía su caja de memoria. Su mano iba sola a cada cajetín, sin mirar. Mientras hablaba conmigo, sus dedos seguían trabajando.
Las letras de plomo estaban al revés, como en un espejo, y en el papel salían derechas. Yo miraba las líneas de metal y no entendía nada. Ella se reía y me daba una letra para jugar.
Los espacios entre las palabras también eran piezas de metal, pero más bajas. No llegaban al papel y por eso no dejaban tinta.
Cada tarde, después del colegio, yo iba a la imprenta. Desde la puerta la veía de pie delante de la caja. Olía a papel, a aceite y a tinta, y la máquina hacía un ruido regular, como un reloj muy grande.
Mi abuela estaba orgullosa de su oficio. Una página bien compuesta se leía sin esfuerzo, y nadie pensaba en la persona que colocaba las letras.
Hoy las letras de plomo se ven sobre todo en los museos. Las palabras caja alta y caja baja siguen vivas entre diseñadores y correctores.
¿Y tú? ¿Qué oficio tenía alguien de tu familia? ¿Cómo era su lugar de trabajo? ¿Había allí algún olor que recuerdas todavía?
About this article
What you'll learn
The imperfect for past habits and description: the -aba and -ía endings, the three irregulars era, iba and veía, mientras with the imperfect, scene setting, and the shared yo and él form. Print shop vocabulary: imprenta, plomo, cajista, cajetín, tipo, tinta.
The narrator remembers Pilar, a grandmother who worked as a compositor in a small print shop in Zamora. Every letter was a separate piece of lead, and they all sat in a large wooden case: capitals in the upper part, small letters, numbers and spaces in the lower one. That is where the Spanish terms caja alta and caja baja come from. The type stood mirrored and printed the right way round, while the spacing pieces sat lower and left no ink. The text runs almost entirely in the imperfect.
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.
de memoria
newby heart, from memory
A fixed phrase with no article. Conocer algo de memoria is to know something so well that you need not look.
Most often with aprender and saber: aprender un poema de memoria, saber el número de memoria.
al revés
newthe other way round, back to front
Al revés describes a reversed or mirrored order. Here the lead letters stood mirrored, and came out the right way round on paper.
It works figuratively too: Lo entendiste al revés means you understood it the wrong way round.
caja alta y caja baja
newupper case, lower case
The Spanish names come from the printer's type case: capitals sat in the upper part, small letters in the lower one.
Mayúscula and minúscula are the everyday words; caja alta and caja baja belong to editing and design. They mean the same as English upper and lower case, which came from the same two parts of the type case.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
la imprenta
una imprenta
printing house; the printing press
Imprenta names both the workshop where things are printed and the invention of printing itself. It is related to imprimir, to print.
Do not confuse it with la impresora, the machine that prints from a computer.
el plomo
de plomo
lead (the metal)
Plomo is the heavy grey metal. Spanish links material to object with de: letras de plomo, mesa de madera.
It gives plomero, the word for a plumber in much of Spanish America.
el cajista, la cajista
cajista
compositor, typesetter
A cajista set text from the letters kept in the case, la caja. The noun is common gender: la cajista for a woman, el cajista for a man, and there is no form cajisto.
Artista, periodista and dentista work the same way: only the article shows gender.
el cajetín
cada cajetín
small compartment in a type case
A cajetín is one little box inside the case. Its name comes from caja, and the ending -ín marks something small.
The same suffix turns maleta into maletín and botica into botiquín, and it is there in calcetín too.
el tipo
Los tipos
a piece of type; a kind, a sort
In a print shop el tipo is a single metal letter. In everyday Spanish tipo means a kind or sort, and colloquially a bloke.
It gives tipografía, and un tipo de letra is a typeface.
el oficio
su oficio
trade, craft
An oficio is a trade learned by doing: cajista, panadero, alfarero. It is not a room: an office is la oficina.
Estar orgulloso de su oficio, to be proud of one's trade; orgulloso is followed by de.
la tinta
tinta
ink
Tinta is the liquid you print or write with. It is related to teñir, to dye, and to tinto, as in vino tinto.
The colloquial sudar tinta means to sweat blood over something.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
-aba: the imperfect of -ar verbs
guardaba las mayúsculas
it kept, she worked, I watched
Verbs in -ar build the imperfect with -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban. The text uses guardaba, trabajaba, miraba, colocaba and dejaban.
The stress falls on the a of -aba, and only the nosotros form carries a written accent: trabajábamos.
-aba versus -ía
Yo miraba las líneas de metal y no entendía nada
I watched and understood nothing
Verbs in -er and -ir take -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían, with only ser, ir and ver stepping aside. This one sentence puts miraba (-ar) next to entendía (-er).
Every -ía form stresses the í, so the accent is always written: comía, salíamos, tenían.
era, iba, veía
yo iba a la imprenta
was, used to go, used to see
Only three verbs break the pattern in the imperfect: ser (era), ir (iba) and ver (veía). All three appear in the text.
It is the shortest irregular list in Spanish grammar: learn these three and every other verb follows -aba or -ía.
mientras + imperfect
Mientras hablaba conmigo, sus dedos seguían trabajando
while she talked, her fingers kept working
Two actions run side by side, so both verbs take the imperfect: hablaba and seguían. Neither has a clear beginning or end.
Conmigo is con plus mí fused into one word, like contigo. The form con mí does not exist.
the imperfect for description
Olía a papel, a aceite y a tinta
it smelled of paper, oil and ink
The imperfect paints the scenery: smells, sounds, weather, how a place looked. The action has no start and no end, it simply lasts inside the memory.
Oler a means to smell of something and always keeps the a: olía a papel. The sentence has no subject, much like English "it smelled".
yo and él share one form
Desde la puerta la veía de pie delante de la caja
from the door I could see her
In the imperfect the yo form and the él or ella form are identical: veía, trabajaba, tenía. Here veía means I saw, because the previous sentence already named the subject.
That is why the writer sometimes adds the pronoun, as in Yo miraba las líneas de metal. Without it the sentence could also read as she watched.
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