Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder by Albert Engström : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 54,865, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder to have a difficulty score of 60. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 60% 60
Vocabulary Difficulty 72% 72
Grammatical Difficulty 48% 48

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

72%

Vocabulary difficulty: 72%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder's text analyzed in terms of frequency vocabulary: a plain vocabulary score, frequency-weighted vocabulary score, banded frequency vocabulary scores based on vocabulary of the text falling in the top 1,000 or 2,000 most frequent words, etc. Here's a further breakdown of how often the top most frequently used words in Swedish appear in the full text of Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 54,865
Number of unique words 10,988
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 2,117
Number of very rare non-entity words 2,303
Number of sentences 9,006
Average number of words/sentence 6

There is some research suggesting that that you need to know about 98% of a text's vocabulary in order to be able to infer the meaning of unknown words when reading. If true, this means that you would need to know around 10,768 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

48%

Grammatical difficulty: 48%

Here is the further grammatical comparison on this text. You can find an explanation of all these scores below.

Measure Score
Measure Score
Automated Readability Index 3
Coleman-Liau Index 6
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.200273
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000365029
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000182515
MTLD Index 57
HDD Index 66
Yule's I Index 73
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 65

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder is 0.200273. The TTR is the most basic measure of lexical diversity. To calculate it, we divide the number of unique words by the number of words in the text. For example, for this text, the number of unique words is 10,988, while the number of words is 54,865, so the TTR is 10,988 / 54,865 = 0.200273. However, the TTR is a very crude measure, as it is extremely dependent on text length. The longer the text, the lower the TTR is usually going to be, since common words tend to often repeat. Especially since the number of words in this text is more than 1,000, the TTR is not likely to give an accurate measure.

The root type-token ratio (RTTR) and corrected type-token ratio (CTTR) are measures which were suggested by researchers to partially address the problem of TTR's variance on text length. In the RTTR, the number of unique words is divided by a square of the number of words (therefore, 10,988 / (54,865 * 54,865) = 0.00000365029), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 10,988 / 2 * (54,865 * 54,865) = 0.00000182515). However, these measures are not as easily readable, and also there is a growing body of research asserting that CTTR and RTTR do not effectively address the problems of text length. Therefore, while we do provide the full text's TTR, RTTR and CTTR on this page, these fiqures do not form part of our final calculations.

The Automated Readability Index (ARI) is one readability measure that has been developed by researchers over the years. The formula for calculating the ARI is as follows:
Formula for calculating the Automated Readability Index

The ARI should compute a reading level approximately corresponding to the reader's grade level (assuming the reader undertakes formal education). Thus, for example, a value of 1 is kindergarten level, while a value of 12 or 13 is the last year of school, and 14 is a sophomore at college. The current ARI of this text is 3, making it understandable for 3-grade students at their expected level of education.

The Coleman Liau Index (CLI) is a similar index designed by Meri Coleman and T. L. Liau, and it is supposed to compute the grade level of the reader (thus, for example, sophomore level material would be around grade 14, or year 14 of formal education, while kindergarten / primary school level material would be close to grade 1 in the CLI). The CLI is usually slightly higher than the ARI. The CLI is computed with this formula:
Formula for calculating the Coleman-Liau Readability Index

It is notable that other indexes exist, such as the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning-Fog Score, and others, but we have chosen not to include them, since, contrary to the ARI and CLI, such other indexes are based on a syllable count and therefore arguably only work for English and not Swedish.

We compute a further compound lexical diversity index, which should range from 1 to a 100 (with the standard deviation being around 10, and its average value being around 50) - it is 65 in the present case. The compound lexical diversity index consists of the following indexes, averaged out (and also provided in the table above):

  • the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity (MTLD) index - a measure which is based on computing the TTR for increasingly larger parts of the text until the TTR drops below a certain threshold point (around 0.7 in our case) - in which case, the TTR is reset, and the overall counter is increased; the counter is at the end divided by the number of words in text; as a result, the MTLD does not significantly vary by text length;
  • the Yule's I index (based on Yule's K characteristic inverted) - an index based on the work of the statistician G.U. Yule, who published his index of Frequency Vocabulary in his paper "The statistical study of literary vocabulary"; Yule's I takes into account the number of words in the text, and a compound summed measure of word frequency;
  • the Hypergeometric Distribution D (HD-D) index (based on vocd) - an index which assesses the contribution of each word to the diversity of the text; to calculate such contributions, a hypergeometric distribution is used to compute probabilities of each word appearing in word samples extracted from the text; then such distributions are divided by sample sizes and added up;

Our overall measure of grammatical diversity is based on a combination of the compound lexical diversity index (which includes the MTLD, Yule's I and HD-D indexes), the ARI and CLI, all normalized and given certain weight. The score should normally range from 1 to 100. In this case, the score is 48.

Other Information about Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder by Albert Engström

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Skomakarn försjönk i tankar framför sitt glas och gjorde ingen min av att gå. Danielsons ögon blixtrade dolskt under de röda brynen. •—Sex! sade han plötsligt med eftertryck. Skomakarn och jag tittade på honom. — Vad menar Danielson med sex? frågade jag. — När jag säger sex, så menar jag sex. — Bry sej inte om"en, Engström, sade Länder, för256 ADEL, PRÄSTER, SMUGGLARE, BÖNDER han har allti vari liksom lite för sej själv. Nää, i fråga om skeppsbyggeri så ä dä inte te hugga hur som helst. Dä ska va särskilda trän för kölen å särskilda ...

Top most frequently used words in Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder by Albert Engström*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 1,972 3.59%
2 en 969 1.77%
3 att 862 1.57%
4 833 1.52%
5 som 762 1.39%
6 han 691 1.26%
7 det 654 1.19%
8 jag 642 1.17%
9 med 566 1.03%
10 för 531 0.97%
11 var 514 0.94%
12 av 496 0.9%
13 inte 486 0.89%
14 den 459 0.84%
15 434 0.79%
16 till 430 0.78%
17 om 384 0.7%
18 är 374 0.68%
19 ett 360 0.66%
20 Men 357 0.65%
21 hade 326 0.59%
22 de 317 0.58%
23 sig 313 0.57%
24 har 299 0.54%
25 vi 237 0.43%
26 skulle 223 0.41%
27 194 0.35%
28 där 193 0.35%
29 ut 182 0.33%
30 man 178 0.32%
31 ha 168 0.31%
32 när 162 0.3%
33 mig 159 0.29%
34 nu 151 0.28%
35 kan 141 0.26%
36 sin 139 0.25%
37 135 0.25%
38 min 135 0.25%
39 honom 134 0.24%
40 från 134 0.24%
41 hon 129 0.24%
42 du 128 0.23%
43 kom 123 0.22%
44 något 118 0.22%
45 hans 118 0.22%
46 ju 116 0.21%
47 ja 114 0.21%
48 icke 110 0.2%
49 SMUGGLARE 108 0.2%
50 BÖNDER 107 0.2%
51 vid 106 0.19%
52 ADEL 106 0.19%
53 eller 106 0.19%
54 PRÄSTER 106 0.19%
55 blev 105 0.19%
56 efter 105 0.19%
57 här 102 0.19%
58 åt 100 0.18%
59 99 0.18%
60 in 96 0.17%
61 ty 95 0.17%
62 gick 94 0.17%
63 upp 94 0.17%
64 mycket 93 0.17%
65 kunde 91 0.17%
66 varit 90 0.16%
67 fick 89 0.16%
68 än 88 0.16%
69 bara 87 0.16%
70 måste 87 0.16%
71 alla 86 0.16%
72 över 85 0.15%
73 sade 85 0.15%
74 någon 81 0.15%
75 oss 80 0.15%
76 Engström 79 0.14%
77 ska 78 0.14%
78 under 77 0.14%
79 väl 76 0.14%
80 får 74 0.13%
81 sina 74 0.13%
82 vad 73 0.13%
83 år 73 0.13%
84 utan 69 0.13%
85 bli 69 0.13%
86 68 0.12%
87 par 68 0.12%
88 ingen 67 0.12%
89 några 66 0.12%
90 dem 66 0.12%
91 gamla 66 0.12%
92 vara 65 0.12%
93 va 64 0.12%
94 hur 64 0.12%
95 mej 64 0.12%
96 aldrig 64 0.12%
97 andra 63 0.11%
98 också 63 0.11%
99 hem 63 0.11%
100 di 62 0.11%
101 ta 61 0.11%
102 sa 61 0.11%
103 går 61 0.11%
104 sitt 59 0.11%
105 själv 59 0.11%
106 ni 58 0.11%
107 två 57 0.1%
108 vill 56 0.1%
109 ur 56 0.1%
110 fått 56 0.1%
111 nog 56 0.1%
112 fram 56 0.1%
113 stod 56 0.1%
114 göra 55 0.1%
115 blir 55 0.1%
116 började 52 0.09%
117 detta 52 0.09%
118 låg 52 0.09%
119 kommer 52 0.09%
120 ville 51 0.09%
121 såg 51 0.09%
122 mitt 50 0.09%
123 finns 50 0.09%
124 49 0.09%
125 fast 49 0.09%
126 dom 47 0.09%
127 sej 47 0.09%
128 allt 47 0.09%
129 Otto 46 0.08%
130 voro 46 0.08%
131 hela 46 0.08%
132 hos 46 0.08%
133 te 45 0.08%
134 äro 44 0.08%
135 tog 44 0.08%
136 gubben 44 0.08%
137 igen 43 0.08%
138 just 42 0.08%
139 genom 42 0.08%
140 gammal 42 0.08%
141 Sandön 42 0.08%
142 liv 42 0.08%
143 gjorde 42 0.08%
144 litet 41 0.07%
145 sett 41 0.07%
146 vet 41 0.07%
147 mot 41 0.07%
148 Nej 41 0.07%
149 dag 40 0.07%
150 engång 40 0.07%
151 Söderlund 39 0.07%
152 pengar 39 0.07%
153 skall 39 0.07%
154 se 39 0.07%
155 sedan 39 0.07%
156 ned 38 0.07%
157 många 38 0.07%
158 kvar 38 0.07%
159 land 37 0.07%
160 Norrlund 37 0.07%
161 komma 36 0.07%
162 alltid 36 0.07%
163 ön 36 0.07%
164 verkligen 35 0.06%
165 rätt 35 0.06%
166 kunna 35 0.06%
167 Petter 35 0.06%
168 mina 35 0.06%
169 gör 35 0.06%
170 madam 34 0.06%
171 resten 34 0.06%
172 folk 34 0.06%
173 tiden 34 0.06%
174 Jo 34 0.06%

This list excludes punctuation or single-letter words, also some different-case repeats of the same words.

If you think the text would be accessible to you, you can read it on our site (click on the cover to access):

Cover of Adel, präster, smugglare, bönder by Albert Engström

Other resources and languages

If you like this analysis, you should have a look at out our lists of Swedish short stories and Swedish books.

If you like literature as a means to learn languages - please take a look at our project Interlinear Books. We even have a Swedish Interlinear book available for purchase.