A Christmas Carol (El cántico de Navidad) for Spanish learners: level, words and how to read it

What the book is about

Ebenezer Scrooge, an old London moneylender, hates Christmas and everything that costs money. On Christmas Eve the ghost of his dead partner Marley visits him in chains and warns him that three spirits will come. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come show him his lonely youth, the poor but happy family of his clerk Bob Cratchit and his own grave. Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning a different man.

Barthe’s translation keeps the five “staves” (estrofas) of the original. The Booklex edition also opens with a short biography of Dickens and ends with an extra story, “La fortuna de un estudiante”, so the word count is higher than the Carol alone.

Themes

• Greed and generosity. Scrooge learns that money kept to yourself makes no one happy.
• Memory and second chances. The past explains who Scrooge became; the future shows he can still change.
• Poverty in Victorian London. The Cratchits, Tiny Tim and the hungry children under the Ghost’s robe.
• Christmas as a feeling. Food, family, music and warmth against the cold of the city.

How hard is A Christmas Carol to read in Spanish?

We measured how much of the book is covered by the most frequent Spanish words (character names excluded). If you know the 2,000 most common words, you will recognise about 81.7% of the words in the book, which leaves roughly 18 unknown words in every hundred. With 5,000 words it is about 12 in a hundred, and with 10,000 words about 8.

For comfortable reading without help, researchers aim for about 98% known words (more in our guide). By vocabulary alone this is a C1 book; with tap-to-translate for the words you do not know, it is readable from B2. On our list it sits between Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, which is a little easier, and Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales, which is a little harder.

What is hard: the translation is from 1883, so the spelling is old and not always consistent (á for the preposition a, jóven, órden, missing accents in habeis or sabeis), and the style is long and ornate, with words like fisonomía, vestidura or aposento. English money (chelín, penique) and London shops (tendero, tahona) appear often. What helps: you probably already know the plot, the book is short, and every stave is one clear episode with one ghost.

Our take: B2 with tap-to-translate (C1 by vocabulary). A good first translated classic: short, well known and divided into five evenings of reading.

Words to know before you start

These words appear often in the book but are much rarer in everyday modern Spanish. Learning them in advance makes the first chapters noticeably easier.

How to read it in Spanish

1. Read one stave per evening. Five staves, five evenings, around 50 minutes each.
2. Skip the biography if you want the story first. The Carol begins with “Estrofa primera”.
3. Don’t worry about accents. Old Spanish spelling puts accents where modern Spanish does not and forgets some others; the words are the same.
4. Read it in December. The book is at its best when the shops outside are full of lights.

The first line

Para empezar: Marley había muerto. Sobre ello no había ni la menor sombra de duda.

Charles Dickens, El cántico de Navidad

Para empezarto begin with

phrase in context

Tap a highlighted word

“To begin with: Marley was dead. There was not the slightest shadow of doubt about that.” One of the most famous openings in English, here in Barthe’s Spanish. Dickens wrote “Marley was dead: to begin with”; the translator moves para empezar to the front, which is how a Spanish storyteller would start.

Frequently asked questions