III. La promesa en el pozo
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«, ¿ ?», .
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« », . « . . . . . . , . ».
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«¡ !», . « . : , , . . ».
A Grimm tale of a promise, retold for A1
The Frog Prince El príncipe rana
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
This is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale in simple Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are just starting to read in Spanish. The tale opens Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in 1812, and the retelling follows the revised edition of 1857. In the catalog it is A1: about 3,400 words told in the present tense, with sentences of 6 words on average. 8 short chapters about a king’s youngest daughter who drops her golden ball into a deep well, and about the frog who offers to bring it back in return for a promise.
- A1
- 3 393 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
You can manage it at A1: sentences are short, the story stays in the present tense, and words like pozo or escalón translate with a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tale reads almost without translation: a short story for getting used to reading in Spanish without stopping.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words: the tale moves in short present-tense statements, and more than a quarter of the words are the characters’ lines in quotation marks. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 140 words, and most of them are everyday forms such as siguiente or alrededor. The difficulty is even: each of the 8 chapters has 6-7 words per sentence. Hansel y Gretel, another Brothers Grimm tale in the catalog, is A2 with 9 words per sentence, and full texts in Spanish start at B2: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence and one long word in fourteen. Hence A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 393
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A king’s youngest daughter, so beautiful that the sun itself is amazed whenever it shines on her face, likes to sit by a cool well under an old linden tree and play with her golden ball. One hot day the ball rolls into the water, and the well is so deep that no one can see the bottom. A fat green frog offers to fetch it, but he does not want her dresses, her pearls or her crown: he wants to be her friend, eat from her golden plate and sleep in her little bed. She promises everything, sure that a frog can never leave his well, and runs home with her ball. The next day, while the king sits at dinner, something comes up the marble stairs and knocks at the door. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El príncipe rana
V. Alguien llama a la puerta
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«¿ ?», .
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: «¡, , !».
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. . ¡! . . .
Choose an underlined word.
Quiero + infinitive
The frog lists his wishes with quiero and an infinitive: quiero jugar, “I want to play”, quiero comer, “I want to eat”. In sentarme and quererme the pronoun is attached to the end of the infinitive: sentarme is “to sit down”, quererme “to love me”. Tienes que quererme: tener que with an infinitive means “to have to”, so “you have to love me”. Si me prometes todo esto: si without an accent is “if”; sí with an accent is “yes”.
Plis, plas and toc, toc
Spanish writes sounds as words: plis, plas is the wet slap of the frog’s feet on the stairs, toc, toc the knock, ¡pum! the door slamming shut. Escalón por escalón: “step by step”, the same noun on both sides of por. Ábreme is the tú command abre, “open”, with me, “for me”, attached; the written accent keeps the stress on á. Está muy pálida: estar, not ser, because she is pale right now, from fear.
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 the whole sentence where simple words add up to an unfamiliar phrase, as in ¿Qué me das a cambio?, “what will you give me in return?”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple Spanish of the Brothers Grimm tale Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich (The Frog King, or Iron Henry), the tale that opens Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in 1812. The retelling follows the revised edition of 1857, which tells the scenes at the well and at the king’s table more fully than the first. The language and length have changed: the present tense, 6 words per sentence on average, and a few scenes opened up into short conversations, so the 8 chapters, about 3,400 words, are much longer than the tale itself. The episodes of the source remain, from the golden ball in the well and the frog’s conditions to the knock at the door, the king’s order to keep the promise, the golden plate and the little silk bed, through to the tale’s own ending with faithful Enrique (Heinrich in German). The full text of the tale is not in the catalog.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this tale on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will mostly be words such as pozo (well) or tilo (linden tree).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. But sentences in this tale average 6 words, so you will rarely need a whole one translated: mostly lines like Lloras tanto que hasta una piedra va a llorar contigo or Una promesa es una promesa, where the words are simple but the pattern is not. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole tale: the pace of someone who still translates new words, not a native speaker’s. There are 8 chapters of roughly 300 to 530 words each, so a chapter is easy to read in one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: each of the 8 chapters averages 6-7 words per sentence. The first and last chapters, which have the most description, run slightly longer at about 7; chapter V, built around the knock at the door and short lines of dialogue, is the shortest at about 6.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 8 chapters directly, for example chapter VI, “El plato de oro”.