Envar sin egen målare by L. F. Lindén : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Envar sin egen målare for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 27,961, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Envar sin egen målare to have a difficulty score of 72. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 72% 72
Vocabulary Difficulty 88% 88
Grammatical Difficulty 56% 56

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 Envar sin egen målare'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 Envar sin egen målare:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Envar sin egen målare: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Envar sin egen målare:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 27,961
Number of unique words 5,809
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 445
Number of very rare non-entity words 2,630
Number of sentences 4,800
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 5,692 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Envar sin egen målare without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

56%

Grammatical difficulty: 56%

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 5
Coleman-Liau Index 9
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.207754
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000743012
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000371506
MTLD Index 61
HDD Index 69
Yule's I Index 83
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 71

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Envar sin egen målare is 0.207754. 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 5,809, while the number of words is 27,961, so the TTR is 5,809 / 27,961 = 0.207754. 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, 5,809 / (27,961 * 27,961) = 0.00000743012), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 5,809 / 2 * (27,961 * 27,961) = 0.00000371506). 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 5, making it understandable for 5-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 71 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 56.

Other Information about Envar sin egen målare by L. F. Lindén

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Envar sin egen målare is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

s. v. Dessa färger lagar man till som förut nämnts och som torkämne tillsättes xerotin eller terpentin, den senare gärna svensk som är billigare men något strävare i lukten. Färgen hålles ganska tunnflytande. Vidare skola vi ha tvenne pimpstenar, en större för de större ytorna och en mindre för de smärre. Pimpstenarna slipas mot en muryta eller ett grovt sandpapper, nr 4 eller 5, så att de få en jämn yta. De penslar vi redan äga kunna användas, nr 10 är den lämpligaste; dessutom skaffa vi oss en mindre s. k. sparpensel samt en moddlare, cirka 8 å 10 cm. bred. Måla vi en dörr, strykes färgen tunt och jämnt över en eller två fyllningar. Sedan slipas i det målade med den större stenen å de släta ytorna och med den mindre å facerna omkring fyllningarna tills inga knutar eller spackeltag kunna skönjas. ...

Top most frequently used words in Envar sin egen målare by L. F. Lindén*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 873 3.12%
2 med 571 2.04%
3 en 571 2.04%
4 att 382 1.37%
5 av 381 1.36%
6 som 362 1.29%
7 man 346 1.24%
8 den 331 1.18%
9 för 255 0.91%
10 är 249 0.89%
11 till 223 0.8%
12 222 0.79%
13 eller 199 0.71%
14 vi 195 0.7%
15 ett 182 0.65%
16 166 0.59%
17 kan 165 0.59%
18 färg 153 0.55%
19 det 151 0.54%
20 Se 129 0.46%
21 icke 128 0.46%
22 de 123 0.44%
23 om 116 0.41%
24 sig 98 0.35%
25 färgen 98 0.35%
26 denna 89 0.32%
27 84 0.3%
28 men 83 0.3%
29 vid 73 0.26%
30 måste 72 0.26%
31 även 67 0.24%
32 bör 66 0.24%
33 sedan 65 0.23%
34 efter 65 0.23%
35 ha 64 0.23%
36 något 63 0.23%
37 nu 63 0.23%
38 har 63 0.23%
39 detta 61 0.22%
40 äro 60 0.21%
41 blir 59 0.21%
42 från 59 0.21%
43 alla 56 0.2%
44 kunna 55 0.2%
45 över 55 0.2%
46 ut 55 0.2%
47 samma 53 0.19%
48 dessa 52 0.19%
49 först 52 0.19%
50 vatten 52 0.19%
51 kg 50 0.18%
52 där 49 0.18%
53 skall 49 0.18%
54 väl 49 0.18%
55 kr 47 0.17%
56 än 47 0.17%
57 tills 47 0.17%
58 endast 46 0.16%
59 mönster 45 0.16%
60 förut 44 0.16%
61 olika 44 0.16%
62 sätt 44 0.16%
63 linolja 43 0.15%
64 ex 42 0.15%
65 mot 41 0.15%
66 andra 40 0.14%
67 oljefärg 39 0.14%
68 två 39 0.14%
69 hela 38 0.14%
70 samt 38 0.14%
71 färger 38 0.14%
72 sin 38 0.14%
73 strykning 37 0.13%
74 målas 37 0.13%
75 vara 37 0.13%
76 vilken 37 0.13%
77 ganska 36 0.13%
78 under 36 0.13%
79 får 36 0.13%
80 fernissa 35 0.13%
81 illustrationer 35 0.13%
82 lätt 34 0.12%
83 målning 34 0.12%
84 genom 34 0.12%
85 stryka 33 0.12%
86 Pris 33 0.12%
87 utan 33 0.12%
88 också 32 0.11%
89 yta 32 0.11%
90 själv 32 0.11%
91 terpentin 32 0.11%
92 pensel 31 0.11%
93 väggar 31 0.11%
94 ytan 31 0.11%
95 fall 31 0.11%
96 större 31 0.11%
97 ofta 31 0.11%
98 tid 30 0.11%
99 lika 30 0.11%
100 här 30 0.11%
101 strykes 29 0.1%
102 pr 29 0.1%
103 ty 28 0.1%
104 färdig 28 0.1%
105 gr 27 0.1%
106 mycket 27 0.1%
107 tager 27 0.1%
108 mera 27 0.1%
109 50 27 0.1%
110 några 27 0.1%
111 strykningen 27 0.1%
112 däremot 26 0.09%
113 tunn 26 0.09%
114 mindre 26 0.09%
115 användes 26 0.09%
116 varje 26 0.09%
117 noga 26 0.09%
118 första 26 0.09%
119 jag 26 0.09%
120 medelst 26 0.09%
121 cirka 26 0.09%
122 användas 26 0.09%
123 nr 26 0.09%
124 ljus 26 0.09%
125 zinkvitt 25 0.09%
126 god 25 0.09%
127 bli 25 0.09%
128 torka 25 0.09%
129 tak 25 0.09%
130 När 24 0.09%
131 skola 24 0.09%
132 helst 24 0.09%
133 in 24 0.09%
134 tunt 24 0.09%
135 bort 24 0.09%
136 måla 24 0.09%
137 gånger 24 0.09%
138 fast 24 0.09%
139 finnes 23 0.08%
140 små 23 0.08%
141 öre 23 0.08%
142 23 0.08%
143 dyl 23 0.08%
144 föremålet 23 0.08%
145 arbetet 22 0.08%
146 väggen 22 0.08%
147 ej 22 0.08%
148 mörk 22 0.08%
149 använda 22 0.08%
150 stryker 21 0.08%
151 vilka 21 0.08%
152 vilket 21 0.08%
153 strykas 21 0.08%
154 limfärg 21 0.08%
155 upp 21 0.08%
156 10 21 0.08%
157 del 21 0.08%
158 tjock 21 0.08%
159 papp 21 0.08%
160 jämnt 20 0.07%
161 oss 20 0.07%
162 gång 20 0.07%
163 alltid 20 0.07%
164 dock 20 0.07%
165 göra 20 0.07%
166 väggarna 20 0.07%

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 Envar sin egen målare by L. F. Lindén

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.