Nordan by Jarl Hemmer : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Nordan for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 7,763, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Nordan 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 Nordan'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 Nordan:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Nordan: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Nordan:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 7,763
Number of unique words 3,221
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 232
Number of very rare non-entity words 465
Number of sentences 1,508
Average number of words/sentence 5

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 3,156 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Nordan 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 3
Coleman-Liau Index 6
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.414917
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.000053448
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.000026724
MTLD Index 88
HDD Index 72
Yule's I Index 90
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 83

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Nordan is 0.414917. 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 3,221, while the number of words is 7,763, so the TTR is 3,221 / 7,763 = 0.414917. 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, 3,221 / (7,763 * 7,763) = 0.000053448), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 3,221 / 2 * (7,763 * 7,763) = 0.000026724). 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 83 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 Nordan by Jarl Hemmer

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

Sample of text:

Jag rullar ratten runt, men se, spikrakt vår skuta flyter. Hon susar in i en koloss av berg, en svart och dimmig. Men viken ringlar före oss, en månorm, silverstrimmig. På knä var man för livet ber: »O Stella maris! Moder!» Mot däcket droppar kallsvett ner i bittersalta floder. Då vet jag råd. Ned under däck jag tumlar, stel av skräcken. Jag formar där av drev och beck det helga korsets tecken. Nordan ...

Top most frequently used words in Nordan by Jarl Hemmer*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 223 2.87%
2 en 153 1.97%
3 som 138 1.78%
4 av 110 1.42%
5 du 80 1.03%
6 till 80 1.03%
7 det 77 0.99%
8 72 0.93%
9 den 69 0.89%
10 ett 66 0.85%
11 är 62 0.8%
12 han 60 0.77%
13 med 57 0.73%
14 jag 51 0.66%
15 mot 47 0.61%
16 att 44 0.57%
17 var 41 0.53%
18 de 37 0.48%
19 för 35 0.45%
20 där 34 0.44%
21 sin 31 0.4%
22 min 31 0.4%
23 hans 31 0.4%
24 ej 31 0.4%
25 allt 30 0.39%
26 från 29 0.37%
27 över 27 0.35%
28 din 27 0.35%
29 dig 26 0.33%
30 Men 26 0.33%
31 mitt 25 0.32%
32 oss 25 0.32%
33 när 25 0.32%
34 ur 25 0.32%
35 än 25 0.32%
36 sig 24 0.31%
37 vi 23 0.3%
38 mig 21 0.27%
39 vid 20 0.26%
40 vår 20 0.26%
41 20 0.26%
42 dess 19 0.24%
43 icke 19 0.24%
44 har 18 0.23%
45 ditt 18 0.23%
46 om 18 0.23%
47 in 16 0.21%
48 16 0.21%
49 under 16 0.21%
50 vad 15 0.19%
51 upp 14 0.18%
52 blott 14 0.18%
53 skall 14 0.18%
54 kom 13 0.17%
55 hon 13 0.17%
56 vart 13 0.17%
57 dag 13 0.17%
58 åter 13 0.17%
59 tog 12 0.15%
60 ljus 12 0.15%
61 sitt 12 0.15%
62 vårt 12 0.15%
63 ingen 12 0.15%
64 går 12 0.15%
65 varje 12 0.15%
66 mer 12 0.15%
67 kring 11 0.14%
68 låg 11 0.14%
69 jorden 11 0.14%
70 dem 11 0.14%
71 står 11 0.14%
72 utan 10 0.13%
73 vill 10 0.13%
74 Rilka 10 0.13%
75 natt 10 0.13%
76 ned 10 0.13%
77 bort 10 0.13%
78 hur 9 0.12%
79 land 9 0.12%
80 blir 9 0.12%
81 hjärta 9 0.12%
82 genom 9 0.12%
83 bröst 9 0.12%
84 nu 9 0.12%
85 tusen 9 0.12%
86 denna 9 0.12%
87 vita 9 0.12%
88 solen 9 0.12%
89 själv 9 0.12%
90 Njardi 9 0.12%
91 slut 8 0.1%
92 själ 8 0.1%
93 år 8 0.1%
94 man 8 0.1%
95 kära 8 0.1%
96 efter 8 0.1%
97 gick 8 0.1%
98 ljuset 8 0.1%
99 ögon 8 0.1%
100 intet 7 0.09%
101 bland 7 0.09%
102 liv 7 0.09%
103 heta 7 0.09%
104 värld 7 0.09%
105 tro 7 0.09%
106 hand 7 0.09%
107 gav 7 0.09%
108 kraft 7 0.09%
109 hav 7 0.09%
110 vet 7 0.09%
111 ifrån 7 0.09%
112 stod 7 0.09%
113 dock 7 0.09%
114 bär 7 0.09%
115 två 7 0.09%
116 hade 7 0.09%
117 tyst 7 0.09%
118 sång 7 0.09%
119 skyn 7 0.09%
120 kan 7 0.09%
121 finns 7 0.09%
122 svarta 6 0.08%
123 aldrig 6 0.08%
124 bro 6 0.08%
125 alla 6 0.08%
126 ovan 6 0.08%
127 mil 6 0.08%
128 stora 6 0.08%
129 måste 6 0.08%
130 ringa 6 0.08%
131 Rilkas 6 0.08%
132 molnen 6 0.08%
133 hårt 6 0.08%
134 landet 6 0.08%
135 stund 6 0.08%
136 egen 6 0.08%
137 Kolho 6 0.08%
138 fjällen 6 0.08%
139 himmel 6 0.08%
140 livets 6 0.08%
141 ni 6 0.08%
142 deras 6 0.08%
143 livet 6 0.08%
144 kvinna 6 0.08%
145 hårda 6 0.08%
146 tills 6 0.08%
147 här 6 0.08%
148 såg 6 0.08%
149 några 6 0.08%
150 stå 6 0.08%
151 Henön 6 0.08%
152 ständigt 5 0.06%
153 rann 5 0.06%
154 sett 5 0.06%
155 is 5 0.06%
156 allting 5 0.06%
157 Fomin 5 0.06%
158 stugan 5 0.06%
159 sist 5 0.06%
160 eller 5 0.06%
161 bli 5 0.06%
162 sjönk 5 0.06%
163 fast 5 0.06%
164 tysta 5 0.06%
165 se 5 0.06%
166 snart 5 0.06%
167 sände 5 0.06%
168 fadern 5 0.06%
169 vem 5 0.06%
170 ut 5 0.06%
171 även 5 0.06%
172 enda 5 0.06%
173 våren 5 0.06%
174 gyllne 5 0.06%
175 stål 5 0.06%
176 vaskade 5 0.06%
177 Krist 5 0.06%
178 samma 5 0.06%
179 kropp 5 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 Nordan by Jarl Hemmer

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.