The Spanish reading room
La gama ciega — The Blind Doe
How long «La gama ciega» is, and how hard
| Length in Spanish | 1,870 running words · 132 sentences · about 7 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 17 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 452 dictionary words, averaging 14.2 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 452 of 452 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 246 — 54%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 3 of 8 by length in the Spanish room |
359 of this tale's own 452 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 142 carry 80%. That is the honest answer to «can I read this yet»: hold those and the reading is close work rather than decoding.
Its chapters
The room reads «La gama ciega» in 5 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In Spanish | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| The Deer’s Lord’s Prayer | El padrenuestro de los venados | 13 |
| The Bees’ Nest | El nido de abejas | 34 |
| The Anteater | El oso hormiguero | 35 |
| The Hunter | El cazador | 25 |
| The Friendship | La amistad | 25 |
How it begins
Había una vez una venado, —una gama— que tuvo dos hijos mellizos, cosa rara entre los venados.
There was once a deer — a doe — who had two twin children, a rare thing among deer.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «La gama ciega» is part of the library — the eight Spanish tales, the German, French and Italian ones and the Russian shelf, every word glossed, sentence-by-sentence English — for €5 a month or €39 a year, cancel whenever you like, one subscription for all five rooms. What the library costs. «Las medias de los flamencos» is free, entire, if you would rather read the room before you buy it, and the opening scene of «La tortuga gigante» after it.
Shorter and longer in the same room
Las medias de los flamencos — 1,401 wordsLa tortuga gigante — 1,710 words El loro pelado — 1,882 wordsLa abeja haragana — 2,032 words
All eight tales of Cuentos de la selva · Horacio Quiroga · the shelf, counted