La guerra de los yacarés — The War of the Caimans
How long «La guerra de los yacarés» is, and how hard
| Length in Spanish | 3017 running words · 254 sentences · about 12 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 27 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 504 dictionary words, averaging 11.9 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 504 of 504 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 224 — 44%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 7 of 8 by length in the Spanish room |
354 of this tale's own 504 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 130 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 guerra de los yacarés» in 6 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In Spanish | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| The Steamer | El vapor | 53 |
| The Dam | El dique | 43 |
| The Warship | El buque de guerra | 37 |
| The Second Dam | El segundo dique | 29 |
| The Surubí | El Surubí | 35 |
| The Torpedo | El torpedo | 57 |
How it begins
En un río muy grande, en un país desierto donde nunca había estado un hombre, vivían muchos yacarés.
In a very great river, in a wild country where no man had ever been, there lived a great many caimans.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «La guerra de los yacarés» 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 abeja haragana — 2032 wordsHistoria de dos cachorros de coatí y de dos cachorros de hombre — 2286 words El paso del Yabebirí — 3348 words
All eight tales of Cuentos de la selva · Horacio Quiroga · the shelf, counted