I. Las palmas
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A memoir of family and exile for C1
Recuerdos de provincia Recuerdos de provincia
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, 1850
Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s memoir from the 1850 first edition, the complete text, not an adaptation. In the catalog it is C1: about 79,900 words and 34 words per sentence on average, with one word in eight having 9 letters or more. 25 sections: the dedication to his countrymen, seventeen chapters on the families of San Juan, his boyhood, his schooling and his public life up to the exile in Chile, and a closing appendix of his writings and notes.
- C1
- 79 945 words
- 13-22 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the long periods of the family chapters, old forms such as elevábanse and empero, and the lists of names, dates and places will be slow going; chapter XVI, on his public life, is the easier place to start.
B2C1
This text
You can manage it at C1: the long sentences hold together through commas and clauses, and the vocabulary of colonial history, schooling and politics returns often enough to learn, translating single words or whole sentences.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 the book reads freely, even the dense chapters on the Oro family and Funes; what is left is the Argentine and Chilean politics of the 1830s and 1840s, which needs background rather than language.
Start readingThe average sentence has 34 words, longer than in Facundo (C1, 30) and shorter than in the catalog’s C2 texts, such as Ariel (46) and Paradise Lost (38). One word in eight has 9 letters or more (12.2%). The difficulty is uneven: the dedication and chapters I-XV, on ancestors, uncles and boyhood, average about 38 words per sentence, with peaks near 49 in chapter II and 46 in chapter XII. Chapter XVI, on his public life, falls to about 25, chapter XVII, on Chile, is near 35, and the closing lists and documents run near 27. Long periods, old forms such as elevábanse and empero, and a crowd of relatives and place names make it C1, not B2. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 79 945
- words
- 34
- words in an average sentence
- 13-22
- hours of reading
- 1850
- Julio Belin y Compañía
Julio Belin y Compañía, 1850. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Written in Chile in 1850, when Sarmiento was an exile from Argentina and the government of Buenos Aires was heaping insults on him, this memoir answers by telling who he comes from. It opens with three lonely palm trees in his home town, San Juan, and goes back to the Huarpe people and to the first families, Mallea, Jofré, Albarracín and Oro. It then turns to the historian Funes and the bishop of Cuyo, to his mother, who built the family house with her loom, to his boyhood home and his schooling, and to a public life that begins with prison at sixteen and the road into exile. How the book weighs that road is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Recuerdos de provincia
XIV. Mi hogar paterno
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Choose an underlined word.
One sentence, three palms
The 66-word opening sentence is built on one picture: three palms (tres palmeros) rise above the orange groves. Elevábanse is se elevaban with the pronoun after the verb, an old bookish order, and no ha mucho means not long ago. De los que quedan dos aún says that two of the three still stand. Then a guisa de, like, brings in the feather-crowns of American Indians, and only after that does the next sentence explain why palms are foreign here.
A house paid for in cloth
The key phrase is cuyos adobes y tapias pudieran computarse en varas de lienzo: the walls could be counted in yards of cloth, because his mother wove the money that built them. Pudieran is the imperfect subjunctive of a possibility (could be counted), and empero is an old synonym of sin embargo, however. After that the sentence turns from the house of today to the house of memory, la imagen indeleble that keeps returning.
Where the text gets harder
·-XVfamily histories and boyhood: long sentences
- ·A mis compatriotas solamente
- ILas palmas
- IIJuan Eugenio de Mallea
- IIILos huarpes
- IVLos hijos de Jofré
- VLos hijos de Mallea
- VILos Sayavedras
- VIILos Albarracines
- VIIILos Oro
- IXFray Justo Santa María de Oro
- XDomingo de Oro
- XIEl historiador Funes
- XIIEl obispo de Cuyo
- XIIILa historia de mi madre
- XIVMi hogar paterno
- XVMi educación
XVI-·public life, Chile and documents: shorter sentences
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
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The first sentence of chapter I has 66 words and begins elevábanse no ha mucho tres palmeros solitarios: translating the whole sentence in Reader shows the frame, three palms above the orange groves, before the details pile up.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Spanish books B2 Earlier Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism Facundo: civilización y barbarie Another book by the same author C1
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not a learner’s adaptation: Sarmiento’s complete memoir, with the dedication A mis compatriotas solamente, seventeen chapters, the appendix of his writings and the author’s numbered notes. The reader follows the 1850 Santiago first edition (Julio Belin y Compañía) as transcribed on Wikisource, with the spelling modernised.
Is there an audiobook?
Recuerdos de provincia has no audiobook on MovaReader: the memoir is read on screen, and the translation appears when you tap a word. You will need it most for old and regional words such as secadales, tapias or descollar.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most in the family chapters, where sentences are long: the very first one, about the three palm trees, has 66 words. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole memoir takes about 13-22 hours: the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker’s. Chapters range from about 200 words (chapter VI) to about 9,500 (chapter XV), so the short ones fit a break and the long ones an evening.
Where does the text get easier?
From chapter XVI, on his public life: about 25 words per sentence, against about 38 in the dedication and chapters I-XV. Chapter XVII, on Chile, is near 35, and the closing lists and documents near 27, though they are full of names and titles.
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 memoir where you left off. Any of the 25 sections also opens from the contents on this page, for example chapter XVI, La vida pública.