Literature analysis for language learners: C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet by Arvid Ahnfelt

C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet by Arvid Ahnfelt : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 79,125, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet to have a difficulty score of 73. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 73% 73
Vocabulary Difficulty 88% 88
Grammatical Difficulty 59% 59

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

88%

Vocabulary difficulty: 88%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet'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 C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 79,125
Number of unique words 14,642
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 3,465
Number of very rare non-entity words 6,440
Number of sentences 10,289
Average number of words/sentence 8

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 14,349 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

59%

Grammatical difficulty: 59%

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 6
Coleman-Liau Index 9
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.185049
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000233869
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000116935
MTLD Index 70
HDD Index 69
Yule's I Index 82
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 74

The type-token ratio (TTR) of C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet is 0.185049. 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 14,642, while the number of words is 79,125, so the TTR is 14,642 / 79,125 = 0.185049. 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, 14,642 / (79,125 * 79,125) = 0.00000233869), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 14,642 / 2 * (79,125 * 79,125) = 0.00000116935). 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 6, making it understandable for 6-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 74 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 59.

Other Information about C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet by Arvid Ahnfelt

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

I stället höll han sig med en manlig trotjenare, nämligen en från Långholmen frigifven korrektionist vid namn Dufva. Honom hade ryttmästaren för sin egen räkning, och ingen i huset tordes säga något till honom eller besvära honom med andra göromål än sådana som tilhörde honom såsom betjent åt sin välborne herre. Borsta behöfde han aldrig, ty ryttmästaren gick alltid oborstad. Men om denne ämnade sig bort någon gång, ålåg det Dufva att bränna honom i håret; likväl utkammades icke lockarna, utan sutto som knölar kring hufvudet. Midt på golfvet i ryttmästarens rum stod ett klavér, med tumstjockt dam på tangenterna, ty Scheven rörde det aldrig, ehuru han ursprungligen lär varit ganska musikalisk. En mängd ...

Top most frequently used words in C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet by Arvid Ahnfelt*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 2,091 2.64%
2 att 1,845 2.33%
3 en 1,237 1.56%
4 af 1,147 1.45%
5 som 1,100 1.39%
6 det 1,074 1.36%
7 den 989 1.25%
8 är 907 1.15%
9 till 845 1.07%
10 han 824 1.04%
11 för 772 0.98%
12 på 747 0.94%
13 jag 707 0.89%
14 med 695 0.88%
15 icke 695 0.88%
16 sig 615 0.78%
17 ett 594 0.75%
18 så 557 0.7%
19 Almqvist 537 0.68%
20 om 530 0.67%
21 de 458 0.58%
22 man 387 0.49%
23 då 353 0.45%
24 har 337 0.43%
25 men 328 0.41%
26 mig 320 0.4%
27 var 320 0.4%
28 ej 319 0.4%
29 sin 312 0.39%
30 kan 304 0.38%
31 vara 254 0.32%
32 eller 250 0.32%
33 skulle 248 0.31%
34 vi 239 0.3%
35 detta 238 0.3%
36 denna 230 0.29%
37 hans 229 0.29%
38 hafva 225 0.28%
39 utan 215 0.27%
40 hvad 210 0.27%
41 än 206 0.26%
42 honom 196 0.25%
43 vid 191 0.24%
44 nu 179 0.23%
45 allt 168 0.21%
46 från 167 0.21%
47 såsom 166 0.21%
48 Gud 166 0.21%
49 Almqvists 165 0.21%
50 efter 164 0.21%
51 öfver 159 0.2%
52 du 154 0.19%
53 min 150 0.19%
54 här 149 0.19%
55 oss 146 0.18%
56 väl 146 0.18%
57 alla 145 0.18%
58 hon 141 0.18%
59 genom 139 0.18%
60 något 139 0.18%
61 mycket 138 0.17%
62 der 138 0.17%
63 skall 137 0.17%
64 någon 137 0.17%
65 under 136 0.17%
66 hade 135 0.17%
67 blott 132 0.17%
68 sina 131 0.17%
69 sjelf 131 0.17%
70 andra 125 0.16%
71 dem 124 0.16%
72 hos 122 0.15%
73 kunde 119 0.15%
74 annat 117 0.15%
75 sitt 117 0.15%
76 äfven 110 0.14%
77 kunna 105 0.13%
78 ingen 103 0.13%
79 dig 101 0.13%
80 går 99 0.13%
81 bref 99 0.13%
82 varit 98 0.12%
83 dock 95 0.12%
84 äro 94 0.12%
85 ännu 94 0.12%
86 vill 93 0.12%
87 dessa 92 0.12%
88 några 89 0.11%
89 blifvit 88 0.11%
90 hela 88 0.11%
91 mot 86 0.11%
92 också 86 0.11%
93 göra 83 0.1%
94 henne 82 0.1%
95 måste 81 0.1%
96 huru 80 0.1%
97 hvilka 80 0.1%
98 sedan 80 0.1%
99 år 79 0.1%
100 gång 79 0.1%
101 få 77 0.1%
102 ganska 76 0.1%
103 samma 76 0.1%
104 åt 75 0.09%
105 tid 75 0.09%
106 många 75 0.09%
107 aldrig 75 0.09%
108 säger 74 0.09%
109 hvilken 72 0.09%
110 nämligen 72 0.09%
111 må 71 0.09%
112 se 70 0.09%
113 ut 70 0.09%
114 hvilket 69 0.09%
115 skrifver 68 0.09%
116 ty 68 0.09%
117 lika 68 0.09%
118 när 68 0.09%
119 säga 66 0.08%
120 sjelfva 66 0.08%
121 in 65 0.08%
122 sätt 64 0.08%
123 emedan 63 0.08%
124 annan 63 0.08%
125 Scheven 62 0.08%
126 gjorde 62 0.08%
127 mera 61 0.08%
128 derför 61 0.08%
129 ville 59 0.07%
130 redan 59 0.07%
131 ur 58 0.07%
132 blef 58 0.07%
133 mitt 58 0.07%
134 alldeles 58 0.07%
135 bland 58 0.07%
136 an 58 0.07%
137 lif 57 0.07%
138 von 56 0.07%
139 Amorina 56 0.07%
140 gjort 56 0.07%
141 likväl 55 0.07%
142 vår 54 0.07%
143 gå 53 0.07%
144 vore 52 0.07%
145 god 52 0.07%
146 samt 52 0.07%
147 mer 51 0.06%
148 Stockholm 51 0.06%
149 stor 50 0.06%
150 skola 50 0.06%
151 kärlek 50 0.06%
152 rätt 49 0.06%
153 hennes 49 0.06%
154 står 49 0.06%
155 vet 49 0.06%
156 del 48 0.06%
157 ock 48 0.06%
158 första 48 0.06%
159 namn 48 0.06%
160 Aftonbladet 47 0.06%
161 komma 47 0.06%
162 mina 46 0.06%
163 litet 46 0.06%
164 vilja 45 0.06%
165 gör 45 0.06%
166 tog 45 0.06%
167 endast 44 0.06%
168 ifrån 43 0.05%
169 långt 43 0.05%
170 alltid 43 0.05%
171 mellan 42 0.05%
172 följande 42 0.05%
173 enda 42 0.05%
174 enligt 42 0.05%
175 inom 41 0.05%
176 emot 41 0.05%
177 ord 41 0.05%
178 upp 41 0.05%

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 C. J. L. Almqvist. Hans lif och verksamhet by Arvid Ahnfelt

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.