Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet by Claes Annerstedt : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 21,764, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet to have a difficulty score of 80. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 80% 80
Vocabulary Difficulty 98% 98
Grammatical Difficulty 63% 63

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

98%

Vocabulary difficulty: 98%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet'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 Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 21,764
Number of unique words 5,899
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 761
Number of very rare non-entity words 2,059
Number of sentences 2,918
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 5,781 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

63%

Grammatical difficulty: 63%

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 7
Coleman-Liau Index 11
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.271044
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.0000124538
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000622689
MTLD Index 84
HDD Index 67
Yule's I Index 74
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 75

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet is 0.271044. 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 5,899, while the number of words is 21,764, so the TTR is 5,899 / 21,764 = 0.271044. 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, 5,899 / (21,764 * 21,764) = 0.0000124538), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 5,899 / 2 * (21,764 * 21,764) = 0.00000622689). 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 7, making it understandable for 7-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 75 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 63.

Other Information about Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet by Claes Annerstedt

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Hvad som slår i ögat, då man läser tidens på svenska affattade skrifter, är språkets naivitet. Intrycket kan i någon mån bero af språkets egen outvecklade barnsliga art, men hufvudsakligen är naiviteten en återspegling af tide-hvarfvets lynne. I denna enkla, friska, ännu ej öfverfinade tid fann man ingenting anstötligt i att kalla saker vid deras rätta namn, att begagna starka och sanna, om ock ej alltid sköna bilder samt att beröra ting, om hvars tillvaro man, med nutidens städade begrepp, till och med bör låtsa sig ej äga kännedom. Månget af tidens uttalanden, som vi ofvan anfört, torde härom burit vittne, och handlingarna äro ej fattiga på bevis i dettä afseende; vi vilja anföra några, somäro särskildt karakteristiska. Djupt rörande är stundom ...

Top most frequently used words in Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet by Claes Annerstedt*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 744 3.42%
2 att 587 2.7%
3 som 381 1.75%
4 af 370 1.7%
5 en 308 1.42%
6 den 277 1.27%
7 ej 276 1.27%
8 det 270 1.24%
9 de 253 1.16%
10 till 251 1.15%
11 216 0.99%
12 för 212 0.97%
13 med 188 0.86%
14 var 171 0.79%
15 sig 163 0.75%
16 man 135 0.62%
17 ett 119 0.55%
18 han 114 0.52%
19 om 103 0.47%
20 103 0.47%
21 sin 98 0.45%
22 vid 91 0.42%
23 än 82 0.38%
24 hade 74 0.34%
25 dock 71 0.33%
26 äfven 70 0.32%
27 under 69 0.32%
28 genom 68 0.31%
29 kunde 68 0.31%
30 men 67 0.31%
31 66 0.3%
32 voro 66 0.3%
33 från 65 0.3%
34 eller 63 0.29%
35 är 62 0.28%
36 öfver 59 0.27%
37 denna 58 0.27%
38 skulle 56 0.26%
39 adeln 56 0.26%
40 utan 53 0.24%
41 hans 52 0.24%
42 måste 52 0.24%
43 sina 50 0.23%
44 dem 49 0.23%
45 ock 46 0.21%
46 detta 46 0.21%
47 tid 45 0.21%
48 hos 45 0.21%
49 dess 43 0.2%
50 alla 43 0.2%
51 stora 41 0.19%
52 Gustaf 41 0.19%
53 adelns 41 0.19%
54 efter 39 0.18%
55 ännu 39 0.18%
56 nya 38 0.17%
57 där 38 0.17%
58 dessa 37 0.17%
59 år 36 0.17%
60 hafva 36 0.17%
61 hvad 35 0.16%
62 har 34 0.16%
63 ofta 34 0.16%
64 ty 33 0.15%
65 deras 33 0.15%
66 blott 32 0.15%
67 andra 32 0.15%
68 något 31 0.14%
69 allt 30 0.14%
70 varit 30 0.14%
71 tidens 30 0.14%
72 vara 30 0.14%
73 väl 29 0.13%
74 mot 29 0.13%
75 rätt 28 0.13%
76 bildning 28 0.13%
77 när 28 0.13%
78 samt 28 0.13%
79 senare 27 0.12%
80 mera 27 0.12%
81 nu 27 0.12%
82 honom 26 0.12%
83 kan 26 0.12%
84 mycket 26 0.12%
85 icke 26 0.12%
86 svenska 26 0.12%
87 främmande 25 0.11%
88 samma 25 0.11%
89 blef 25 0.11%
90 Karl 24 0.11%
91 gång 24 0.11%
92 bonden 24 0.11%
93 huru 24 0.11%
94 sitt 24 0.11%
95 våra 23 0.11%
96 någon 23 0.11%
97 del 23 0.11%
98 stor 22 0.1%
99 högre 22 0.1%
100 redan 22 0.1%
101 större 22 0.1%
102 utveckling 22 0.1%
103 själfva 22 0.1%
104 oss 22 0.1%
105 Stockholm 22 0.1%
106 Adolf 21 0.1%
107 gamla 21 0.1%
108 ju 21 0.1%
109 hela 21 0.1%
110 såsom 21 0.1%
111 Axel 21 0.1%
112 mindre 21 0.1%
113 Oxenstjerna 20 0.09%
114 själf 20 0.09%
115 starka 20 0.09%
116 annat 20 0.09%
117 vi 19 0.09%
118 Uppsala 18 0.08%
119 hvilken 18 0.08%
120 hvilka 18 0.08%
121 därför 18 0.08%
122 vårt 18 0.08%
123 adel 18 0.08%
124 sedan 18 0.08%
125 hon 18 0.08%
126 inom 17 0.08%
127 dylikt 17 0.08%
128 in 17 0.08%
129 bondens 17 0.08%
130 kronor 17 0.08%
131 åt 17 0.08%
132 länge 17 0.08%
133 första 17 0.08%
134 egen 17 0.08%
135 tider 17 0.08%
136 bättre 17 0.08%
137 taga 17 0.08%
138 Sverige 17 0.08%
139 många 17 0.08%
140 ur 16 0.07%
141 hvarje 16 0.07%
142 lif 16 0.07%
143 ville 16 0.07%
144 nästan 16 0.07%
145 blifva 16 0.07%
146 se 16 0.07%
147 prästerskapet 15 0.07%
148 göra 15 0.07%
149 ehuru 15 0.07%
150 fick 15 0.07%
151 långt 15 0.07%
152 däraf 15 0.07%
153 endast 15 0.07%
154 Adolfs 15 0.07%
155 godt 15 0.07%
156 all 15 0.07%
157 barn 15 0.07%
158 städerna 15 0.07%
159 mer 14 0.06%
160 början 14 0.06%
161 Sveriges 14 0.06%
162 Per 14 0.06%
163 dylika 14 0.06%
164 upp 14 0.06%
165 såg 14 0.06%
166 landet 14 0.06%
167 rikets 14 0.06%
168 visserligen 14 0.06%
169 tiden 14 0.06%
170 ingen 14 0.06%
171 Whitelocke 14 0.06%
172 hvar 13 0.06%
173 antal 13 0.06%
174 ofrälse 13 0.06%
175 stark 13 0.06%
176 syntes 13 0.06%
177 ställning 13 0.06%
178 lika 13 0.06%
179 hvilket 13 0.06%
180 sätt 13 0.06%
181 här 13 0.06%
182 henne 13 0.06%
183 längre 13 0.06%
184 säger 13 0.06%
185 gjorde 13 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 Om samhällsklasser och lefnadssätt under förra hälften af 1600-talet by Claes Annerstedt

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.