IV. La visita del viejo ministro
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«¡ !», . «¡ ! ¿ ? ¡ ! ¿ ? . ¡!».
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« , », . «, . ¿ ?».
«¿ , ?», . « . ¿ ? ¿ ?».
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«... ... ¡ !», . « . ¡ ! ¡ !».
A comic Andersen tale retold for A1
The Emperor’s New Clothes El traje nuevo del emperador
Hans Christian Andersen
This is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale in simple Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are just starting to read in Spanish. 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 an emperor who loves new clothes more than anything and two swindlers who promise him a cloth that fools cannot see.
- A1
- 3 372 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 telares or pícaros translate with a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tale reads almost without translation: a short, funny text for building speed and getting used to longer reading in Spanish.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words, the same as in the A1 adaptation of Andersen’s The Ugly Duckling: the tale moves in short present-tense statements, and about a third of the words are the characters’ lines in quotation marks. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 35 words, more often than in The Ugly Duckling (once in 110), but 57 of those 95 long words are emperador itself, and the next most frequent, tejedores, appears only 8 times. The difficulty is even: the chapters range from 5.4 words per sentence (chapter V) to 6.2 (chapter II). Full texts in Spanish start at B2 in the catalog: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 372
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
An emperor loves new clothes more than anything: he has a coat for every hour of the day, and people say he is always in his wardrobe. Two swindlers arrive in his city, call themselves weavers and promise a wonderful cloth that anyone foolish or unfit for his post cannot see. The emperor pays them in gold, and they set up two empty looms and keep the silk and gold thread for themselves. His honest old minister sees nothing, and neither does a second official, but both praise the cloth, and soon the emperor goes to look for himself. How the great procession turns out is not revealed here.
Compare two places
El traje nuevo del emperador
VIII. ¡Pero si no lleva nada!
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«¡ !», .
«¡ !», . «¡ ! ».
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«¿ ?».
« ».
«¿?».
« ».
Choose an underlined word.
Seeing nothing, politely
Spanish doubles the negative: No ve nada means “he sees nothing”, with no before the verb and nada after it. When nadie or nada comes first, no is dropped: Nadie lo puede saber, “nobody can know it”. The swindlers address the minister as usted, so their commands end in -e: Acérquese, “come closer”, Mire, “look”. ¿Es bonita, verdad? adds verdad at the end, like “isn’t it?”.
Pero si at the start
¡Pero si no lleva nada! Here si does not mean “if”: pero si at the start of an exclamation protests against what everyone else claims, “but he isn’t wearing anything!”. Llevar means “to wear” as well as “to carry”. Escuchad is a command to several people at once (vosotros), the form used in Spain: the father speaks to everyone around him. In Lo mira bien, lo stands for the emperor.
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 bien le queda, Majestad!, “how well it suits you, Your Majesty!”.
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 Hans Christian Andersen’s tale Keiserens nye Klæder, first published in 1837 in the third booklet of his Eventyr, fortalte for Børn. The language and length have changed: the present tense, 6 words per sentence on average, and the scenes opened up into short conversations, so the 8 chapters, about 3,400 words, run more than twice the length of the tale itself. The episodes of the source remain: a coat for every hour of the day, the two swindlers and their cloth that fools cannot see, the empty looms, the visits of the old minister, the second official and the emperor himself, and the night before the procession with sixteen candles and needles without thread. 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 telar (loom) or pícaro (rogue).
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 hacen como que quitan la tela del telar or ¿No sirvo para mi trabajo?, 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 350 to 500 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 between 5.4 and 6.2 words per sentence. Chapters IV and V, the visits of the old minister and the second official, run slightly shorter at about 5.5, because they are almost all dialogue; the rest are 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 VII, “La noche antes del desfile”.