I. Jornada primera
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A novel in dialogue, five jornadas, for B2
The Grandfather El abuelo
Benito Pérez Galdós, 1897
Benito Pérez Galdós’s complete novel from the 1897 Madrid edition, not an adaptation, written almost entirely as dialogue. In the catalog it is B2: about 67,800 words and 9 words per sentence on average. Five jornadas about a ruined, nearly blind old count and his two granddaughters; the short lines are easy to follow, the country and legal vocabulary and the long stage directions make it a B2 read.
- B2
- 67 788 words
- 11-19 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the short lines are easy to follow, but the long stage directions and the old-fashioned country vocabulary, such as tarasca or palurdas, will need translating.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2: most of the book is quick exchanges between two or three speakers, and the long stage directions and the preface can be read slowly, translating single words.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novel reads freely; only Galdós’s long preface and some rural and legal slang slow you down.
Start readingThe average sentence has only 9 words, because Galdós wrote the novel almost entirely as dialogue with stage directions in brackets: that is close to the plays Luces de bohemia (8) and El burlador de Sevilla (7) and far below his narrative novels Doña Perfecta (15) and Misericordia (18). A word of 9 letters or more turns up about once in twelve (8.0%), inside the 4.5-9.2% range of the catalog’s complete B2 texts. What keeps it at B2 is the length of about 67,800 words, the 1890s vocabulary of country life, law and nobility, and the long stage directions: the preface and the list of characters before the first jornada average about 19 words per sentence. Hence B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 67 788
- words
- 9
- words in an average sentence
- 11-19
- hours of reading
- 1897
- Viuda e Hijos de Tello
Viuda e Hijos de Tello, 1897. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Don Rodrigo de Arista-Potestad, Count of Albrit, is over seventy, proud, poor and almost blind. He has come back from Peru without the gold he went to find, and his only son is dead. What is left of the family is his two granddaughters, Nell and Dolly, who live on a farm called La Pardina with their tutor Don Pío and a couple of former tenants, while their mother, the Countess Lucrecia, comes and goes. Then a secret comes out: one of the girls is not of his blood, and the old count, who lives by honor and lineage, sets out to find which. What he learns, and what it costs him, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El abuelo
III. Jornada tercera
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Choose an underlined word.
A page that reads like a play
Speakers’ names stand in capitals and stage directions sit in brackets, so you follow who speaks without a narrator. Tarasca is a fierce, scolding woman, here the Countess Lucrecia. Se juntarán aquí el agua y el fuego is a picture for two people who cannot stand each other: fire and water in one place. Rabiar de verse juntos finishes the thought: they rage at finding themselves together.
Teasing with diminutives
The girls tease their tutor with affectionate endings: maestrillo, ilustradito. The -illo and -ito suffixes make a word smaller and warmer, and here they carry a joke too: ilustradito is “our little scholar”, said with a grin. ¡Anda, salero! is a fond scolding. ¡Vaya un pelo que has echado con tu ilustración! is ironic: “a fine profit you made of your learning”.
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
The stage directions are written as long narrative sentences, for example “que ha sabido ganar con paciencia, sordidez y astucia una holgada posición”: translating the whole sentence in Reader keeps the thread through its string of clauses.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: Benito Pérez Galdós’s complete novel, all five jornadas, with the author’s own preface and the list of characters. The reader follows the 1897 Madrid edition (Viuda e Hijos de Tello) as published by Project Gutenberg, where the spelling has been brought into line with the Spanish Academy’s 2010 norms. The book is written in the form of a play, and its subtitle says novela en cinco jornadas.
Is there an audiobook?
El abuelo has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read on screen. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for country and legal words such as tarasca or palurdas.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long stage directions in brackets, for example “que ha sabido ganar con paciencia, sordidez y astucia una holgada posición”, where one sentence runs on through several clauses. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 11-19 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. The five jornadas run from about 10,000 to 15,500 words, so each one is a long evening or two.
Where does the text get easier?
From the first jornada. The preface and the list of characters before it are the densest part, at about 19 words per sentence. After that the dialogue is even: about 9 words per sentence in jornadas I, II and IV, and about 8 in III and V.
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 you can come back to the novel where you left off. Each of the five jornadas also opens from the contents on this page.