II. La primera noche
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A Grimm tale of straw and gold for A1
Rumpelstiltskin Rumpelstiltskin
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
This is a retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale in simple Spanish, not the original text: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who are just starting to read in Spanish. The tale first appeared in Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812, and the retelling follows the 1857 edition. In the catalog it is A1: about 3,600 words told in the present tense, with sentences of 6 words on average. 8 short chapters about a miller’s daughter locked in a room full of straw and the strange little man who offers to spin it into gold for her.
- A1
- 3 552 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 rueca or carrete translate with a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tale reads almost without translation: a quick read for building speed and getting used to longer texts in Spanish.
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words: the story moves in short present-tense statements, and about a third of the words are the characters’ lines in quotation marks. Only a few lines of dialogue step into the present perfect, such as Le he dicho una mentira. A word of 9 letters or more comes up about once in 115 words, and the tale keeps returning to the same small set of words: paja, oro, rueca, noche. The difficulty is even: each of the 8 chapters averages 5-7 words per sentence. Full texts in Spanish start at B2 in the catalog: Unamuno’s Mist has 13 words per sentence and one long word in fourteen. Hence A1. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 552
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A poor miller wants to look important in front of the king, so he boasts that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king locks the girl in a room full of straw: by morning it must be gold, or she will die. She has no idea how to do it and starts to cry, and then a tiny man walks in through the locked door. He can spin gold, but every night he wants something in return, and the king wants more gold with every room. When the girl has nothing left to give, she makes a promise. A year later the little man comes back for it and gives the young queen three days to guess his name. Whether she can is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Rumpelstiltskin
V. La promesa
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Choose an underlined word.
What will you give me?
The bargain rests on one pattern: ¿Qué me das si lo hago por ti?, “what will you give me if I do it for you?”. Spanish keeps the present tense both after si and in the main clause, where English often says will. Me and te come before the verb: me das, “you give me”; te doy, “I give you”. Yo sé hacerlo: saber with an infinitive means “to know how to”, and lo, “it”, is added to the end of the infinitive.
Gold, jewels and a deal
Te doy, “I give you”, opens three sentences in a row as the queen offers gold, jewels and land. Déjame a mi niño is an order with the pronoun joined to the verb: deja and me make déjame, “leave me”, and the written accent keeps the stress on the first syllable. Más querido que: más with an adjective and que compares, “dearer than”. Si en tres días sabes mi nombre: the present again after si, where English says “if you know my name within three days”.
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 Le queda grande, “it is too big for him”.
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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 the Brothers Grimm tale Rumpelstilzchen, first published in the first volume of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, 1812; the retelling follows the 1857 edition, the last one published in the brothers’ lifetime. The language and length have changed: the present tense, 6 words per sentence on average, and a few scenes opened up into short conversations, so the 8 chapters, about 3,600 words, run more than three times the length of the tale itself. The episodes of the source remain: the miller’s boast to the king, three nights in ever larger rooms of straw, the necklace and the ring as payment, the promise made on the third night, and the three days the queen is given. 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 from the spinning room, such as rueca (spinning wheel) or carrete (spool).
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 ¿Qué me das si lo hago por ti? or Algo vivo es para mí más querido que todo el oro del mundo, 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 250 to 700 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 5 to 7 words per sentence. The shortest sentences are in chapter VI, “El primer día”, where short questions and answers follow one another (about 5); chapters I, IV and VII run slightly longer, at about 6.5.
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 III, “La segunda noche”.