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An A2 adaptation of Cervantes’s novel
Don Quixote Don Quijote
Miguel de Cervantes
This is a retelling of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel in simple Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who already know the past tenses and want the whole story of Don Quixote. In the catalog it is A2: about 8,900 words, 10 words per sentence on average. 12 chapters cover both parts of the novel, of 1605 and 1615: from the gentleman’s library and the windmills to the Duke and Duchess’s castle and Sancho Panza’s governorship.
- A2
- 8 892 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 the past tenses will stop you: the narration runs in the pretérito indefinido and imperfecto (salió, dijo, vivía, tenía), at 10 words per sentence on average.
A1A2
This text
You can manage it at A2: sentences are short, the story stays in the past tenses you know, and old words like yelmo or bacía are explained by the text itself.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 the adaptation reads with room to spare, almost without translation: in 1-2 hours you get through both parts of the novel before turning to the full Spanish texts, which start at B2 in the catalog.
Start readingThe average sentence has 10 words: the story is told in the past, with events in the pretérito indefinido and background in the imperfecto, and more than a quarter of the words are the characters’ lines and thoughts in quotation marks. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 36 words, and almost a quarter of those are caballero and caballeros. The old words Don Quixote cannot do without are explained by the text itself: Un yelmo es un casco, Una bacía es un plato grande de metal. The difficulty is even: each of the 12 chapters has 10-11 words per sentence. Full texts in Spanish start at B2 in the catalog: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence and one long word in fourteen, and the complete Don Quixote, at 43 words per sentence, is C2. Hence A2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 8 892
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
A modest gentleman of La Mancha reads books of chivalry day and night until he decides to become a knight errant himself. He fits his old helmet with a cardboard visor, names his bony horse Rocinante and makes a farm girl from El Toboso, who knows nothing about it, his lady Dulcinea. An innkeeper knights him as a joke, and his neighbor Sancho Panza becomes his squire for the promise of an island. Windmills look like giants to Don Quixote, flocks of sheep like armies and a barber’s basin like the enchanted helmet of Mambrino. Later they learn that a book about them has come out, and a duke and duchess who have read it welcome the pair to their castle and play one joke on them after another, up to Sancho’s governorship. How their travels end is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Don Quijote
IX. Espejos y leones
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Choose an underlined word.
Giants or windmills
Don Quixote and Sancho describe the same “arms”: for one they are the brazos largos of giants, for the other the aspas of a mill. No son gigantes, sino molinos: no... sino means “not..., but...”. Mire usted is a polite command with usted, “look”. Con lo que ganemos: after lo que about the future Spanish uses the subjunctive, “with whatever we win”. Quitarles la vida: “to take their lives”.
Two past tenses side by side
The lion acts in the pretérito indefinido: abrió, estiró, bostezó, sacó, se echó, each action begins and ends. Don Quixote meanwhile is in the imperfecto: lo miraba y esperaba, “was watching and waiting”, a background that goes on. Se dio la vuelta: “turned around”. No le hizo ningún caso: “paid him no attention at all”. Dele is the polite command of dar with the pronoun le: “give him”.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
Reader translates whole sentences, and here that helps most where Don Quixote speaks in the high style of his books, as before the windmills: Aunque muevan más brazos que el gigante Briareo, me las van a pagar.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Spanish books A1 Earlier Don Quixote El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha Another book by the same author C2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
A learner adaptation, not the original: MovaReader retold Miguel de Cervantes’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha in simple Spanish; the novel’s first part came out in 1605 and the second in 1615. The language and length have changed: modern Spanish in the past tenses, 10 words per sentence on average, 12 chapters and about 8,900 words, while the complete novel of 126 chapters is more than 40 times longer. The main adventures of both parts remain: the knighting at the inn, the windmills, the flocks of sheep, Mambrino’s helmet, the galley slaves, the cage on the ox cart, the lions, the ducal castle and Sancho’s governorship. The inserted novellas, the pastoral stories and many smaller adventures are left out. The complete novel is in the catalog too: Cervantes’s Don Quixote, both parts, at level C2.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audio version of this adaptation: MovaReader gives you the text, not a recording. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears next to it; here that will mostly be a knight’s gear, such as lanza, escudo or espuela.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
The Reader plan translates whole sentences. Here they are not long, 10 words on average, so you will seldom need one translated: mostly the narrator’s jokes, like podía derretirle los sesos, si es que tenía algunos, and turns taken from Cervantes, like del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el cerebro. The free plan also translates single words, up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole adaptation takes 1-2 hours at the pace of someone who still translates new words. A chapter averages about 740 words, or 7-12 minutes of reading, so one evening easily covers several chapters.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even: each of the 12 chapters averages 10-11 words per sentence, so there is no easier stretch. Only long words vary noticeably: in chapter III, about the burned books, one word in 50 has 9 letters or more, and in the last chapter, XII, one in 24, most often caballero.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes, once you sign in: the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so next time you carry on from there. The contents on this page also take you straight to any chapter, say XI, “Sancho, gobernador”, where Sancho finally gets his island.