Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 by Lars Johan Govenius : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 11,678, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 to have a difficulty score of 71. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 71% 71
Vocabulary Difficulty 84% 84
Grammatical Difficulty 58% 58

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

84%

Vocabulary difficulty: 84%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840'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 Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 11,678
Number of unique words 3,629
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 529
Number of very rare non-entity words 882
Number of sentences 1,668
Average number of words/sentence 7

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 3,556 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

58%

Grammatical difficulty: 58%

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 4
Coleman-Liau Index 8
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.310755
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.0000266103
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.0000133052
MTLD Index 80
HDD Index 69
Yule's I Index 82
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 77

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 is 0.310755. 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 3,629, while the number of words is 11,678, so the TTR is 3,629 / 11,678 = 0.310755. 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, 3,629 / (11,678 * 11,678) = 0.0000266103), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 3,629 / 2 * (11,678 * 11,678) = 0.0000133052). 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 4, making it understandable for 4-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 77 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 58.

Other Information about Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 by Lars Johan Govenius

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Doktor efterskickades. Fru Winckler var ensam med sin förskräckelse och sin smärta; men hon lät klokhet och besinning i stället för grät och tandagnisslan taga öfverhanden. Hon tvättade ren den af sot och smuts nästan oigenkänlige sonen, lade ett kallt omslag på hufvudet och den uppsválda armen, värmde upp de kalla fötterna med varma krus, fällde i tysthet en tår och satte sig vid sängen att bedja för sitt barn, tills doktorn anlände. Det var en rörande syn att se denna moder, nedlutad öfver det käraste föremal hon etjde i verlden, med hjertat uppfyldt af bäfvan, ty hon visste ej huru svart sjuk han var, och ovissheten härom förstorade hennes oro. Men helt oförmodadt började den sjuke gifva tillkänna lifsverksamhet23 ...

Top most frequently used words in Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 by Lars Johan Govenius*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 435 3.72%
2 en 218 1.87%
3 att 208 1.78%
4 som 162 1.39%
5 den 158 1.35%
6 med 154 1.32%
7 114 0.98%
8 är 109 0.93%
9 jag 104 0.89%
10 var 98 0.84%
11 af 95 0.81%
12 ej 95 0.81%
13 sig 94 0.8%
14 han 91 0.78%
15 det 89 0.76%
16 hade 86 0.74%
17 hon 79 0.68%
18 ty 78 0.67%
19 till 77 0.66%
20 men 75 0.64%
21 för 74 0.63%
22 ett 71 0.61%
23 sin 64 0.55%
24 vid 55 0.47%
25 55 0.47%
26 om 54 0.46%
27 de 54 0.46%
28 man 47 0.4%
29 skulle 46 0.39%
30 du 42 0.36%
31 41 0.35%
32 utan 39 0.33%
33 hans 37 0.32%
34 Alfred 37 0.32%
35 har 37 0.32%
36 denna 37 0.32%
37 nu 36 0.31%
38 henne 35 0.3%
39 min 34 0.29%
40 hennes 32 0.27%
41 Norling 32 0.27%
42 honom 32 0.27%
43 mig 32 0.27%
44 sina 31 0.27%
45 Winckler 31 0.27%
46 sitt 31 0.27%
47 Elin 31 0.27%
48 alla 27 0.23%
49 vara 26 0.22%
50 kunde 23 0.2%
51 ni 23 0.2%
52 hjerta 23 0.2%
53 efter 22 0.19%
54 än 22 0.19%
55 sjelf 22 0.19%
56 Reuss 21 0.18%
57 flickan 21 0.18%
58 mitt 21 0.18%
59 ut 21 0.18%
60 hvad 21 0.18%
61 år 19 0.16%
62 skall 19 0.16%
63 dig 19 0.16%
64 son 19 0.16%
65 från 19 0.16%
66 varit 18 0.15%
67 genom 18 0.15%
68 se 17 0.15%
69 blifva 17 0.15%
70 vill 17 0.15%
71 hela 17 0.15%
72 detta 17 0.15%
73 kan 16 0.14%
74 upp 16 0.14%
75 er 16 0.14%
76 unga 16 0.14%
77 moder 16 0.14%
78 ville 16 0.14%
79 farbror 16 0.14%
80 ännu 16 0.14%
81 lifvet 16 0.14%
82 dessa 15 0.13%
83 eller 15 0.13%
84 fram 15 0.13%
85 hvilken 15 0.13%
86 Gud 15 0.13%
87 dag 15 0.13%
88 mot 15 0.13%
89 hos 15 0.13%
90 andra 15 0.13%
91 stegen 14 0.12%
92 der 14 0.12%
93 åt 14 0.12%
94 natten 14 0.12%
95 kommer 14 0.12%
96 modren 14 0.12%
97 ju 14 0.12%
98 13 0.11%
99 under 13 0.11%
100 snart 13 0.11%
101 gång 13 0.11%
102 aldrig 13 0.11%
103 ord 13 0.11%
104 stod 13 0.11%
105 öfver 13 0.11%
106 dem 13 0.11%
107 lif 13 0.11%
108 äfven 13 0.11%
109 nog 13 0.11%
110 väl 13 0.11%
111 glädje 13 0.11%
112 fick 12 0.1%
113 elden 12 0.1%
114 hand 12 0.1%
115 måste 12 0.1%
116 sade 12 0.1%
117 yttrade 12 0.1%
118 någon 12 0.1%
119 blef 12 0.1%
120 svarade 12 0.1%
121 några 12 0.1%
122 ögon 12 0.1%
123 mera 12 0.1%
124 allt 12 0.1%
125 hafva 12 0.1%
126 ned 11 0.09%
127 menniska 11 0.09%
128 kring 11 0.09%
129 när 11 0.09%
130 lilla 11 0.09%
131 döden 11 0.09%
132 god 11 0.09%
133 stora 11 0.09%
134 mina 11 0.09%
135 såsom 11 0.09%
136 alldeles 11 0.09%
137 håll 11 0.09%
138 ingen 11 0.09%
139 tiden 10 0.09%
140 sedan 10 0.09%
141 älskade 10 0.09%
142 redan 10 0.09%
143 vi 10 0.09%
144 återigen 10 0.09%
145 din 10 0.09%
146 10 0.09%
147 menniskor 10 0.09%
148 fru 10 0.09%
149 barn 10 0.09%
150 flicka 10 0.09%
151 in 10 0.09%
152 här 10 0.09%
153 visste 10 0.09%
154 samt 10 0.09%
155 ja 9 0.08%
156 började 9 0.08%
157 kunna 9 0.08%
158 något 9 0.08%
159 många 9 0.08%
160 gick 9 0.08%
161 mannen 9 0.08%
162 stund 9 0.08%
163 blick 9 0.08%
164 taga 9 0.08%
165 huru 9 0.08%
166 fader 9 0.08%
167 sjöman 9 0.08%
168 helt 9 0.08%
169 derföre 9 0.08%
170 fått 9 0.08%
171 hvarandra 9 0.08%
172 ropade 9 0.08%
173 huset 9 0.08%
174 ifrån 9 0.08%
175 egen 9 0.08%
176 Olof 9 0.08%
177 9 0.08%
178 gammal 8 0.07%
179 gubben 8 0.07%
180 at 8 0.07%
181 oss 8 0.07%
182 händer 8 0.07%
183 gatan 8 0.07%
184 handen 8 0.07%
185 menniskan 8 0.07%
186 kom 8 0.07%
187 rådman 8 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 Lif och Död eller Branden vid Glasbruksgatan år 1840 by Lars Johan Govenius

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.