I. El burro viejo
. . . . .
, . . .
«¿ ?», . « . . ¿ ? ».
. .
«¡ ! ¡ !», . « . . . ».
A tale of four animals, adapted for A1
Town Musicians of Bremen Los músicos de Bremen
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
What you read here is not the Brothers Grimm original but a retelling in simple Spanish: MovaReader adapted the tale Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (1819), also known in English as The Bremen Town Musicians, for level A1. It is written for readers just starting out in Spanish: about 3,400 words in 8 chapters, 6 words per sentence on average and no past tense at all. An old donkey, dog, cat and rooster are no longer wanted by their owners and set off together for Bremen to become town musicians.
- A1
- 3 443 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
Right for A1: sentences of 6 words on average, no past tense, and every meeting on the road follows the same pattern: the donkey’s question, a complaint, an invitation to Bremen, so a chapter reads with only single words to translate.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tale reads without effort and nearly without translation; the only new words may be a few about farm life, such as molino, establo or paja.
Start readingSentences average 6 words, just as in the A1 adaptations The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. The A2 adaptation of Don Quixote has 10, and the complete text of Unamuno’s Mist, at B2, has 13. Only 10 words in the whole text have 9 letters or more, about one in 345, and half of them are the rooster’s Quiquiriquí; in Mist every fourteenth word is that long. There is no past tense at all: the story runs in the present, plans are made with ir a plus an infinitive, and over a third of the words are the characters’ own lines and thoughts. From the first chapter to the eighth the average sentence stays at about 6 words, so the difficulty is even. So Town Musicians of Bremen sits at A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 443
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
An old donkey has carried sacks to the mill for many years, and now his master means to be rid of him. The donkey slips away at dawn and sets off for Bremen, where, he thinks, he can become a town musician. On the road he is joined by a hunting dog whose master wants him dead for being old, a cat whose mistress meant to drown her in the river, and a rooster due to end up in tomorrow’s soup. Bremen is more than a day away, so the four spend the night in a forest, and from the top of a tree the rooster spots a light. It leads to a house where robbers are feasting at a table full of food, and the hungry animals decide to drive them out. What comes of their plan, this page does not reveal.
Compare two places
Los músicos de Bremen
VI. Música en la ventana
. : «¡!». : «¡, !». : «¡, !». : «¡!».
¡ ! . : ¡, , ! , .
. . . .
«¡ ! ¡ !», .
. . .
Choose an underlined word.
A night of hard thinking
Aquí soplan malos vientos literally means “ill winds blow here”: it is said when trouble is coming, and the next sentence spells it out, Su vida está en peligro. The donkey’s thoughts sit in quotation marks like spoken lines, and piensa tells you he is talking to himself. Tengo que irme is “I have to get away”; in irme, as in quedarme, the pronoun me is attached to the end of the verb. The donkey answers his own ¿adónde voy?, “where do I go?”, himself: ¡Voy a Bremen!
A concert at the window
Each animal gets its own sound verb here: el burro rebuzna, el perro ladra, la gata maúlla, and the rooster simply canta. Spanish spells the sounds its own way: Guau for “woof”, Quiquiriquí for “cock-a-doodle-doo”. En mil pedazos is “to smithereens”, literally “into a thousand pieces”. Salen corriendo means “they run out”: a verb of motion plus the -iendo form says how they leave. In se esconden, “they hide”, se stands for “themselves”.
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 lifts the daily limit on translating words, of which there will be plenty at A1, and translates whole sentences, such as the donkey’s En todas partes hay algo mejor que la muerte, which reads oddly word by word.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation: MovaReader retold the Grimm tale in its own words rather than translating it. The source is the Brothers Grimm tale Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten, which entered their Children’s and Household Tales in 1819; Margaret Hunt’s English translation, The Bremen Town-Musicians, is on Project Gutenberg. What changed is the language: the Spanish retelling has no past tense, short sentences and the most common words. The Grimm tale fills a few pages, while the retelling runs to 8 chapters and about 3,400 words, with scenes and talk that grow out of the tale, such as the donkey’s sleepless night in the stable or the animals chatting about Bremen on the road. Every Grimm episode stays, in the same order, along with the nicknames Gris and Cabeza Roja and the saying the tale ends with.
Is there an audiobook?
No. MovaReader offers this tale as text only, with no recorded voice. The words you will look up most are names of animals and things and verbs for animal sounds, such as ladra or rebuzna.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: the Reader plan translates a sentence in one go. The hard part here is not sentence length, 6 words on average, but figures of speech that do not work word by word: Aquí soplan malos vientos or Tu grito me llega hasta los huesos. Free users translate word by word until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
Around one hour if you read with translation of unfamiliar words, not at native speed. The chapters are small, 385 to 506 words each, so each takes 4 to 8 minutes.
Where does the text get easier?
There is no easier stretch, because the difficulty is even: each of the 8 chapters averages about 6 words per sentence. Five of the text’s 10 long words fall in chapter VIII, mostly corriendo and the rooster’s Quiquiriquí, and the sentences there are just as short.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once signed in, the reader holds your place and the words you opened, so the tale can wait until tomorrow. Any chapter also opens from the contents on this page, chapter III for one, about the cat who got away from her mistress.