II. El queso y el pájaro
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«¿ ?», . « ».
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A Grimm tale of a tiny hero, retold for A1
The Brave Little Tailor El sastrecillo valiente
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 comes from Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in 1812, and the retelling follows the revised edition of 1857. In the catalog it is A1: about 3,700 words told in the present tense, with sentences of 6 words on average. 8 short chapters about a little tailor who kills seven flies with one blow, sews “Siete de un golpe” on his belt and sets out to show the world how brave he is.
- A1
- 3 668 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 cinturón or jabalí translate with a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tale reads almost without translation: good for gaining speed before longer texts in Spanish.
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 55 words, and about a third of those are two words the story keeps coming back to, mermelada and unicornio. 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.
- 3 668
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
One summer morning a little tailor buys a spoonful of jam, spreads it on his bread and goes back to his sewing. Flies come for the sweet smell, and with one blow of a cloth he kills seven of them. So proud that the town now seems too small for him, he sews a belt with the words Siete de un golpe, “seven at one blow”, puts an old cheese and a little bird in his pocket and goes out into the world. On a mountain top he meets a giant who thinks the seven were men, and a contest of strength begins. Later the belt brings him to a king’s palace, where everyone takes him for a great warrior. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El sastrecillo valiente
VI. Dos gigantes bajo un árbol
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Choose an underlined word.
La aprieta, lo aprieta
La and lo both mean “it”, but they follow the gender of the noun: la aprieta is the stone (la piedra), lo aprieta the cheese (el queso). Haz tú lo mismo is the tú command of hacer: “you do the same”. Un juego de niños, “a children’s game”, is the Spanish for “child’s play”. A ¿no? at the end of a sentence asks for agreement, like “isn’t it?”.
Me pegas, te pego
Object pronouns stand before the verb: me pegas, “you hit me”, te pego, “I hit you”, me tiras piedras, “you throw stones at me”. Estás soñando is estar with a gerund, an action happening right now: “you are dreaming”. In se despierta, se acuestan and se duermen the se shows that the giants do it to themselves: “wakes up”, “lie down”, “fall asleep”. ¿Por qué?, two words with an accent, asks “why?”.
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 Para mí es un juego de niños, “for me it is child’s play”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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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 Das tapfere Schneiderlein (The Brave Little Tailor), from Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in 1812. The retelling follows the revised edition of 1857, the last one the brothers prepared themselves. 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 3,700 words, are a little longer than the tale itself. The episodes of the source remain, from the jam, the flies and the belt, the cheese and the bird, the oak and the cherry tree, the night in the giants’ cave and the king’s service, to the two giants in the forest, the unicorn and the wild boar, and through to the tale’s own ending. 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 cinturón (belt) or trapo (rag).
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 Le tiene un poco de respeto or Tirar, sí sabes, 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 320 to 520 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. Chapter IV, the night in the giants’ cave, has the shortest sentences at about 6; chapter V, where the king and his soldiers talk over what to do with the tailor, has the longest at about 7.
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 VII, “El unicornio y el jabalí”.