I. La ratita presumida
, . , . . .
. ¡ ! , .
«¡ !», . «¿ ?».
.
«¿ ? . . ».
.
«¿ ? . . , ».
. , . .
Spanish folk tales adapted for A1
The Vain Little Mouse and Other Spanish Folk Tales La ratita presumida y otros cuentos
Fernán Caballero
What you read here is not the original but a retelling in simpler Spanish: MovaReader adapted for level A1 five folk tales written down by Fernán Caballero and first published as a collection in 1877. The best known of them, The Vain Little Mouse, takes up the first 4 of the 8 chapters: a mouse finds a coin, dresses up and chooses a husband. Then come the stories of a sly fox and a gullible wolf, of three wishes, of a cheeky little bird and of the monster Carlanco. Together they come to about 4,000 words, with 7 words per sentence on average, and the telling stays in the present tense from the first page to the last.
- A1
- 3 969 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
This collection is within reach at A1: sentences average 7 words, the only tense is the present, and the characters keep repeating the same questions and sayings, so it reads well one tale at a time, translating single words.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the text is easy: the vocabulary is familiar, the sentences are short, and you may only need the dictionary for words like morcilla, abejaruco or cerrajero.
Start readingSentences here have 7 words on average: one more than in The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood (6 each), and about half as many as in Unamuno’s Mist (13), which has the shortest sentences among the catalog’s complete Spanish texts and sits at B2. A word of 9 letters or more turns up about once in 160 words, while in Mist it is one word in fourteen and in the A2 adaptation of Don Quixote one in thirty-six; the whole collection has 25 of them, such as presumida, cerrajero or abejaruco. More than a third of the words are the characters’ lines in quotation marks, and they repeat: ¿Y cómo me vas a enamorar? is asked six times, and the chain that begins with Porque Ratón Pérez está en la olla grows by one link with each new character. There are no difficult stretches: in every one of the 8 chapters the average sentence stays between 6 and 8 words. Together these facts point to A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 969
- words
- 7
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A tidy little mouse is sweeping her doorstep when she finds a copper coin, and she spends it on rouge. All dressed up, she sits at her window while suitors pass one after another: a bull, a dog, a cat, a pig and a rooster, and each of them only frightens her with his racket. Her heart goes to quiet Ratón Pérez. One Sunday she goes to Mass, leaves her husband to mind the pot on the fire and tells him to stir it only with the big ladle. The collection goes on with a fox who invents christenings to feast on her old friend the wolf’s honey, an old couple granted three wishes by a fairy, a little bird who orders clothes from a tailor and never pays, and a goat who once saved a wasp leaves her kids alone at home, though the monster Carlanco is prowling nearby. How each of the five tales ends is not told here.
Compare two places
La ratita presumida y otros cuentos
VI. Los deseos
, . , . . . . .
« », . « . : . », . « », . « . , ».
Choose an underlined word.
What to buy with a coin
The mouse thinks aloud in the present tense: ¿Compro piñones?, “shall I buy pine nuts?”, ¿Qué hago yo con esta moneda?, “what do I do with this coin?”. Object pronouns go before the verb: No los puedo abrir, “I can’t crack them”, literally “open them”. In Me lo como en un momento the verb comerse means “to eat up”, so the line reads “I’d gobble it up in a moment”. The preposition de names the material: una moneda pequeña, de cobre, “a small copper coin”.
The fairy speaks to both
The fairy addresses the couple as ustedes, so verbs and pronouns are in the third person plural: oigo sus quejas, “I hear your complaints”, les doy tres deseos, “I give you three wishes”, me dicen cuál es, “you tell me which one”. To each of them alone she says ti: Uno es para ti. In le dice a la mujer, the pronoun le and the words a la mujer point to the same person, a doubling that is normal in Spanish. The present tense can also mean the future: Mañana por la noche vuelvo, “I’ll come back tomorrow night”.
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 lifts the daily limit on word translations, which helps with sayings such as ¡Ni pensarlo! or ¡Ábrela tú, guapo! that do not translate word by word.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is not the original: MovaReader wrote this text as an adaptation. The source is five Spanish folk tales written down by Fernán Caballero, the male pen name of Cecilia Böhl de Faber, and first published together in Cuentos, oraciones, adivinas y refranes populares e infantiles in 1877. In her book the title tale is called La hormiguita, and its heroine is a little ant who marries the mouse Ratón Pérez; here it is told with a little mouse, as in the better-known version, La ratita presumida. The language is simplified: present tense, short sentences and modern words in place of old ones, such as moneda for ochavito, an old copper coin. The first tale gains dialogue at the shop, with every suitor and around the warning about the ladle, which makes it more than twice as long as the original. The other four, El lobo bobo y la zorra astuta, Los deseos, El pícaro pajarillo and El Carlanco, are retold more briefly or at about the same length, with all their episodes in the original order.
Is there an audiobook?
No: MovaReader offers these five tales as text only, without an audiobook. An unfamiliar word translates with a tap, and in these tales it is mostly a household thing or an animal: olla, cucharón, palomar, avispa.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan, though length rarely calls for it here: sentences average 7 words. It earns its keep on idioms such as Vamos a hacer las paces or Viven como dos tortolitas. On the free plan, word-by-word translation works too, with a cap per day.
How many hours does it take?
Roughly an hour for all five tales if you stop to translate unfamiliar words; a native speaker would be quicker. Chapters run from 300 to nearly 770 words, and each of the four shorter tales fits in a single chapter, so you can finish one in a sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The text does not get easier, because the difficulty is even: all 8 chapters have 6 to 8 words per sentence. The first three chapters, about the mouse, have the shortest sentences, around 6 words, and chapter VII, about the bird, the longest, around 8; it also has the most long words, such as sombrerero and picotazos.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes: sign in, and the reader will remember both the page where you stopped and every word you tapped, so the collection waits for you whenever you return. Every chapter also opens from the contents on this page: you can start straight away with chapter VIII, about the Carlanco, for instance.