Around the World in Eighty Days (La vuelta al mundo en ochenta días) for Spanish learners: level, words and how to read it

What the book is about

In 1872 Phileas Fogg, a precise and silent London gentleman, bets twenty thousand pounds at the Reform Club that he can go around the world in eighty days. He leaves the same evening with his new French servant, Passepartout, here called Picaporte. A detective, Fix, follows them across Suez, Bombay, Hong Kong and San Francisco, sure that Fogg is a bank robber.

On the way Fogg rescues Aouda, a young Indian widow, from being burned alive, Passepartout gets lost in Japan, and the train across America is attacked by the Sioux. Every chapter brings a new delay, and the last pages decide whether the bet is won.

Themes

• Time and precision. Fogg lives by the clock; the whole book is a race against it.
• Travel in the 1870s. The new Suez Canal, the railway across India, the first transcontinental line in America.
• Loyalty. Passepartout, Aouda and even Fix end up changed by the journey.
• Humour. Fogg’s calm against Passepartout’s panic is the engine of many scenes.

How hard is Around the World in Eighty Days 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 81.5% of the words in the book, which leaves roughly 19 unknown words in every hundred. With 5,000 words it is about 11 in a hundred, and with 10,000 words about 7.

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 Treasure Island, which is a little easier, and Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, which is a little harder.

What is hard: the 1885 spelling (á for the preposition a, accents missing in words like atencion), a few typos in the digitised text, and English words Verne left in: mister, mistress, gentleman. There is a lot of travel vocabulary (maquinista, marejada, palanquín, trineo) and distances in millas. What helps: short chapters (37 of about 1,800 words each), a clear map of the journey and a plot where every chapter ends with a problem to solve.

Our take: B2 with tap-to-translate (C1 by vocabulary). Longer than a short story collection, but the race keeps you reading. A good second or third book.

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. Keep a map open. Following the route makes the place names and the dates much easier.
2. Read two chapters a day. That is about 20 days, a quarter of Fogg’s schedule.
3. Don’t learn mister and mistress. They are English words; in modern Spanish you would say señor and señora.
4. Count the days with Fogg. The book gives the date in almost every chapter; tracking it keeps you in the story.

The first line

En el año 1872, la casa número 7 de Saville-row, Burlington Gardens —en la cual murió Sheridan en 1814— estaba habitada por Phileas Fogg…

Jules Verne, La vuelta al mundo en ochenta días

en la cualin which

phrase in context

Tap a highlighted word

“In the year 1872, house number 7 in Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814, was lived in by Phileas Fogg…” The novel opens with a precise address and two dates, the way Fogg himself would describe the world. The Spanish keeps Verne’s long first sentence and his ironic tone.

Frequently asked questions