Language through Literature

El loro pelado — The Plucked Parrot


Horacio Quiroga, 1918 · 1882 words in Spanish · from Cuentos de la selva

How long «El loro pelado» is, and how hard

Length in Spanish 1882 running words · 149 sentences · about 8 printed pages
Time to read about 17 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand
Different words 419 dictionary words, averaging 12.6 words a sentence
Words glossed 419 of 419 — every one that appears in the tale
Words that appear once 220 — 53%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone
Where it stands 4 of 8 by length in the Spanish room

325 of this tale's own 419 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 126 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 «El loro pelado» in 5 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.

SceneIn SpanishSentences
Pedrito Pedrito 22
The Tiger El tigre 44
The Hollow Tree El hueco del árbol 28
The Return La vuelta 32
Rich Potato Rica, papa 23

How it begins

Había una vez una bandada de loros que vivían en el monte.

There was once a flock of parrots that lived in the forest.

That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «El loro pelado» is part of the library — the eight Spanish tales, the eight German 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 three 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

La tortuga gigante — 1710 wordsLa gama ciega — 1870 words La abeja haragana — 2032 wordsHistoria de dos cachorros de coatí y de dos cachorros de hombre — 2286 words

All eight tales of Cuentos de la selva · Horacio Quiroga · the shelf, counted