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A mountain village and its dialect, for B2
Peñas arriba Peñas arriba
José María de Pereda
José María de Pereda’s novel of 1895, complete and not an adaptation. In the catalog it is B2: about 134,600 words and 34 words per sentence on average. 34 chapters and a dedication, told by Marcelo, a man from Madrid whom his uncle calls to the mountain village of Tablanca; the sentences are the longest of any B2 book here, and the villagers speak in dialect.
- B2
- 134 560 words
- 22-37 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the sentences of 40 or 50 words, old forms like vímonos or apartéme, and the mountain vocabulary will be slow going.
B1B2
This text
You can manage it at B2 if you read in short stretches: the narration is clear and orderly, and single words can be translated as you go, with whole sentences for the longest periods.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the novel reads steadily; only the villagers’ dialect and the rare country words, names of tools, plants and paths, still send you to the translation.
Start readingThe average sentence has 34 words, longer than in any other B2 book of the catalog (the longest of them, Bécquer’s Leyendas, has 32), while the C2 books start at 38. One word in eleven has 9 letters or more, 8.9%, which is B2 and short of the C1 line of one in ten. The weight is uneven: chapters IV and V average about 25 words per sentence, while chapters VII and XXVII go over 50. On top of that come country words and the villagers’ speech (osu, esu, Pitu), which the narrator’s educated Spanish sets off. Hence B2, at its upper edge. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 134 560
- words
- 34
- words in an average sentence
- 22-37
- hours of reading
Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg
What it is about, without the ending
Marcelo, a man from Madrid, has put off for months the invitation of his uncle Celso, who writes from the mountain village of Tablanca, in old-fashioned spelling, calling him to his side for an indefinite time. At last Marcelo sets out: by train, then on horseback behind the guide Chisco, along paths wrapped in mist. In Tablanca he meets the priest don Sabas, the doctor Neluco, hunters and herdsmen, and Lita, the granddaughter of don Pedro Nolasco. What the stay does to a city man, and how it ends, is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Peñas arriba
XIV
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Choose an underlined word.
Mist like wet wool
One image carries the whole sentence: the mist torn from the peaks hangs like wet fleeces put out to dry on the rocks. Find the verb remedaban (“they imitated, they looked like”) first; everything around it describes what is being compared. The second paragraph names the river’s trees, mimbreras (osiers), alisos (alders) and zarzamora (bramble), the plain vocabulary of a northern valley.
A regional word in quotes
Marcelo describes the ride with Neluco, the village doctor, in long sentences that mirror a tiring day: keep an eye on the pairs of opposites (subíamos, bajábamos) and the chain porque... que... Pereda puts “pendias” in quotation marks to mark a local word inside the narrator’s educated prose, and then closes the paragraph with a blunt short sentence: aquello fue despeñarse más que bajar.
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
Pereda’s sentences average 34 words: in “vímonos en campo libre, si libre puede llamarse lo que está circuido de barreras” translating the whole sentence in Reader shows how the clauses fit together.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s abridgement: José María de Pereda’s complete novel, all 34 chapters with the dedication to the memory of his son Juan Manuel and the closing note dated Santander, December 1894. The text comes from Project Gutenberg (ebook 24127); the novel was first published in 1895, and the Gutenberg file does not name the printed edition it follows.
Is there an audiobook?
Peñas arriba has no audiobook on MovaReader: here the novel is read. The translation appears when you tap a word, and you will need it most for country and dialect words such as jirones, mimbreras or pendias.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. In this novel it helps most with the long periods, for example “vímonos en campo libre, si libre puede llamarse lo que está circuido de barreras”; the average sentence has 34 words. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole novel takes about 22-37 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters run from about 1,800 to 6,200 words (the last one is a short closing page), so one chapter makes an evening or two.
Where does the text get easier?
Not clearly. The sentences stay long throughout: chapters IV and V are the lightest at about 25 words per sentence, while chapters VII and XXVII go over 50, and no stretch of the book is steadily easier. The dialect appears wherever the villagers speak.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back to the novel where you left off. Any of the 34 chapters also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter I, right after the dedication.