Day 11: Arguing Over Pedro Páramo
At a café in Xalapa, Camila (A), Rodrigo (B) and Aranza (C), three friends from a book club, meet to discuss Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Páramo.
How to study this lesson 3 steps
- Read the situation under the title. It says who is talking and how they know each other, which decides how politely they speak.
- Read the dialogue line by line with its translation, until every line makes sense. Point at (or tap) a Spanish word to see what it means.
- Spend at least 30 minutes listening to native Spanish, for example from the Resources page. It doesn't matter if you don't understand it yet.
Dialogue
Audio recordings are on the way. For now, each lesson is the dialogue with its English translation.
Keys: E hide English · ← → previous / next day · point at a word to see its meaning
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A
¿Qué les pareció? La terminé en una noche y no me la saco de la cabeza.
What did you think? I finished it in one night and I can't get it out of my head.
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B
A mí me desconcertó: cambia de voz sin avisar y nunca supe quién narraba.
I found it baffling: it switches voices without warning and I never knew who was telling the story.
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C
Igual yo. A la mitad ya no sabía quién estaba vivo y quién era fantasma.
Same here. Halfway through I no longer knew who was alive and who was a ghost.
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A
Así está pensada. La maestra de la prepa nos dijo que en Comala todos ya habían muerto.
That's how it's meant to be. Our high school teacher told us that everyone in Comala had already died.
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B
¿Todos muertos? Qué fácil: si nadie entiende, dices que es genial y listo.
All of them dead? How convenient: if nobody understands it, you call it genius and that's that.
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C
¡Espérate, eso lo cambia todo! Con razón Juan Preciado y Dorotea platican desde la tumba.
Hang on, that changes everything! No wonder Juan Preciado and Dorotea are chatting from the grave.
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A
¿Ya ves? Cuando fue publicada, muchos críticos tampoco la entendieron, y hoy es un clásico.
See? When it was published, lots of critics didn't get it either, and today it's a classic.
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