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Children’s Stories: The Little Elephant that Wanted to Fly

A story about a young elephant who learns a valuable life lesson.

A story about a young elephant who learns a valuable life lesson.

Some language stuff

There is one particularly difficult sentence here, and that’s 小象爬到树去学飞“哎哟”一声,摔了一个大跟头. The words themselves aren’t too hard, but the sentence arrangement doesn’t make a lot of sense when directly translated into English. Let’s take it step by step:

小象 – Little Elephant
爬到 – Climbed to / climbed up
树 – tree
去 – go
学飞 – learn to fly
“哎哟” – ‘Ai yo!’ Sound which means “Yikes!” or “Ow!”
一声 – Noise, sound
摔了 – to fall
一个大 – a big
跟头 – Fall, trip and fall.

If you look at all these words together, you can more easily process the overall meaning of the sentence, which is, “In order to learn to fly, Little Elephant climbed a tree and, with a yelp of “Ai Yo!”, fell heavily to the ground.”

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小象也要飞

小象生下来的第三天,跟妈妈来到小河边,看见一只小鸟在天空飞来飞去。小象想:“要是我也会飞,可以看到更多的东西,多好呀!”

小象到树去学飞“哎哟”一声,摔了一个大跟头

蛇看见了说:“小象,我们有自己的本事。我不会飞,可是,我会在树上睡觉。”

狮子说:“我也不会飞,可是,我能跳过宽的大河。”

老虎说:“我不会飞,可是我会游泳!”

爸爸妈妈对小象说:“我们象的力气大,这是小鸟不能比的。”小象明白了。他用长鼻子一钩,大木头就搬走了。

Show English translation »
On the third day after he was born, Little Elephant went with his mother to the banks of a stream, and there he saw a bird in the sky flying here and there. Little Elephant said: “If I could fly, I could see even more things, it would be great!”

In order to learn to fly, Little Elephant climbed a tree and, with a yelp of “Ai Yo!”, fell heavily to the ground.

Seeing this, the snake said: “Little elephant, we all have our own abilities. I can’t fly, but I can sleep in a tree.”

Lion said: “I also can’t fly, but I can jump across a wide river.”

Tiger said, “I can’t fly, but I can swim!”

Little Elephant’s father and mother said to him, “We elephants have great strength, incomparably greater than that little bird’s.”

Little Elephant understood. He used his long nose as a hook and moved a large branch.

15 replies on “Children’s Stories: The Little Elephant that Wanted to Fly”

Thank you for posting this story, it was officially the first text I’ve read in Chinese !

The Little Elephant was a really pleasant read, and your commentary / vocab list were both useful. I’ll be sure to read your other stories as well 🙂

I know i too am guilty of jnimpug from diet to diet as well, I must have tried every single diet program that was available. I was losing hope but ended up trying one last time with the new Jenny Craig weightloss program because I got a free 3 month membership and soefbbbf far I have successfully lost 26 pounds in 4 weeks! I got my free 3 month membership here: bit.ly/W7qOPe?=dtwqhg

Ahh, the tiger knows how to swim, not jump over the river the english translation is wrong
other than tht it is very good!

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