Language through Literature

El paso del Yabebirí — The Ford of the Yabebirí


Horacio Quiroga, 1918 · 3348 words in Spanish · from Cuentos de la selva

How long «El paso del Yabebirí» is, and how hard

Length in Spanish 3348 running words · 245 sentences · about 13 printed pages
Time to read about 30 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand
Different words 547 dictionary words, averaging 13.7 words a sentence
Words glossed 547 of 547 — every one that appears in the tale
Words that appear once 258 — 47%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone
Where it stands 8 of 8 by length in the Spanish room

380 of this tale's own 547 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 131 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 paso del Yabebirí» in 6 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.

SceneIn SpanishSentences
The Man and the Rays El hombre y las rayas 33
The Tiger El tigre 45
The Tigress La tigra 50
The Letter La carta 37
The Battle La batalla 55
The Capybara El carpincho 25

How it begins

En el río Yabebirí, que está en Misiones, hay muchísimas rayas, porque «Yabebirí» quiere decir precisamente «Río-de-las-rayas».

In the river Yabebirí, which is in Misiones, there are a great many stingrays, because “Yabebirí” means precisely “River-of-the-rays”.

That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «El paso del Yabebirí» 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

Historia de dos cachorros de coatí y de dos cachorros de hombre — 2286 wordsLa guerra de los yacarés — 3017 words

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