Literature analysis for language learners: På tro och loven (Norden) by Jack London

På tro och loven (Norden) by Jack London : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is På tro och loven (Norden) for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 49,365, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated På tro och loven (Norden) to have a difficulty score of 49. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 49% 49
Vocabulary Difficulty 54% 54
Grammatical Difficulty 44% 44

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

54%

Vocabulary difficulty: 54%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of På tro och loven (Norden)'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 På tro och loven (Norden):

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for På tro och loven (Norden): a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in På tro och loven (Norden):

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 49,365
Number of unique words 8,224
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 1,698
Number of very rare non-entity words 964
Number of sentences 7,488
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 8,059 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read På tro och loven (Norden) without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

44%

Grammatical difficulty: 44%

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 7
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.166596
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000337477
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000168739
MTLD Index 53
HDD Index 60
Yule's I Index 60
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 58

The type-token ratio (TTR) of På tro och loven (Norden) is 0.166596. 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 8,224, while the number of words is 49,365, so the TTR is 8,224 / 49,365 = 0.166596. 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, 8,224 / (49,365 * 49,365) = 0.00000337477), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 8,224 / 2 * (49,365 * 49,365) = 0.00000168739). 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 58 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 44.

Other Information about På tro och loven (Norden) by Jack London

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the På tro och loven (Norden) is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Rasmunsen gjorde en hastig beräkning. — Tolvtusen dollars, sade han högt. — Vad säger du? frågade mannen. — Ingenting, svarade Rasmunsen och drev på sina hundar. Då han kom till Stewart River, sjuttio miles från Dawson, var fem av hans hundar döda, och de andra föll gång på gång omkull för honom. Han gick nu själv i selen samman med hundarna och drog av all den kraft, som ännu fanns kvar i honom. Men det ville inte säga mycket, och han kröp framåt. Hans kinder och näsa, som åter och åter hade varit förfrusna, var alldeles blåröda och hemska att se på. Tummen, som var skiljd från de andra fingrarna genom slädstången, var också frusen och vållade honom de ...

Top most frequently used words in På tro och loven (Norden) by Jack London*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 2,309 4.68%
2 att 1,043 2.11%
3 han 999 2.02%
4 en 827 1.68%
5 som 822 1.67%
6 det 770 1.56%
7 på 718 1.45%
8 var 687 1.39%
9 till 628 1.27%
10 med 602 1.22%
11 hade 506 1.03%
12 den 495 1%
13 för 468 0.95%
14 sig 468 0.95%
15 de 450 0.91%
16 jag 445 0.9%
17 av 445 0.9%
18 ett 376 0.76%
19 inte 362 0.73%
20 honom 352 0.71%
21 så 318 0.64%
22 om 301 0.61%
23 hans 267 0.54%
24 är 233 0.47%
25 sin 217 0.44%
26 har 197 0.4%
27 men 196 0.4%
28 över 195 0.4%
29 då 176 0.36%
30 hon 170 0.34%
31 mig 170 0.34%
32 från 168 0.34%
33 mycket 163 0.33%
34 där 162 0.33%
35 dem 156 0.32%
36 kom 154 0.31%
37 du 152 0.31%
38 man 146 0.3%
39 efter 143 0.29%
40 upp 142 0.29%
41 kunde 140 0.28%
42 skulle 137 0.28%
43 sina 130 0.26%
44 sade 129 0.26%
45 blev 125 0.25%
46 vid 116 0.23%
47 såg 113 0.23%
48 ut 111 0.22%
49 under 107 0.22%
50 kan 102 0.21%
51 mot 100 0.2%
52 min 99 0.2%
53 tillbaka 99 0.2%
54 detta 93 0.19%
55 in 93 0.19%
56 henne 90 0.18%
57 hela 88 0.18%
58 ha 88 0.18%
59 nu 88 0.18%
60 alla 87 0.18%
61 sitt 86 0.17%
62 något 86 0.17%
63 eller 85 0.17%
64 gjorde 84 0.17%
65 andra 83 0.17%
66 allt 82 0.17%
67 också 81 0.16%
68 gick 79 0.16%
69 vi 78 0.16%
70 vad 75 0.15%
71 få 74 0.15%
72 Jees 74 0.15%
73 fanns 73 0.15%
74 se 73 0.15%
75 hennes 73 0.15%
76 Leclere 72 0.15%
77 själv 72 0.15%
78 än 68 0.14%
79 vara 68 0.14%
80 Bastard 67 0.14%
81 när 66 0.13%
82 började 65 0.13%
83 fram 65 0.13%
84 icke 65 0.13%
85 Uck 61 0.12%
86 stod 60 0.12%
87 åt 60 0.12%
88 genom 59 0.12%
89 Pentfield 59 0.12%
90 Bill 59 0.12%
91 utan 58 0.12%
92 bort 57 0.12%
93 Neil 56 0.11%
94 Moosu 56 0.11%
95 måste 56 0.11%
96 göra 56 0.11%
97 ni 56 0.11%
98 alldeles 56 0.11%
99 Rasmunsen 55 0.11%
100 ska 55 0.11%
101 medan 54 0.11%
102 hur 54 0.11%
103 dig 54 0.11%
104 ned 53 0.11%
105 Kink 53 0.11%
106 ögon 53 0.11%
107 här 53 0.11%
108 stor 52 0.11%
109 stora 52 0.11%
110 Bonner 51 0.1%
111 låg 51 0.1%
112 höll 51 0.1%
113 ingen 50 0.1%
114 aldrig 49 0.1%
115 denna 49 0.1%
116 ansikte 48 0.1%
117 säga 48 0.1%
118 tog 47 0.1%
119 svarade 47 0.1%
120 fick 46 0.09%
121 gång 46 0.09%
122 ty 46 0.09%
123 varit 46 0.09%
124 två 46 0.09%
125 mitt 45 0.09%
126 bli 45 0.09%
127 ur 44 0.09%
128 gå 44 0.09%
129 deras 44 0.09%
130 endast 43 0.09%
131 drog 42 0.09%
132 därför 42 0.09%
133 dag 40 0.08%
134 visste 40 0.08%
135 blivit 39 0.08%
136 ägg 39 0.08%
137 nog 39 0.08%
138 kommit 38 0.08%
139 sätt 38 0.08%
140 Ja 37 0.07%
141 mera 37 0.07%
142 ena 37 0.07%
143 oss 36 0.07%
144 mina 36 0.07%
145 män 36 0.07%
146 mellan 36 0.07%
147 gav 36 0.07%
148 ville 35 0.07%
149 hundar 35 0.07%
150 par 35 0.07%
151 många 35 0.07%
152 dollars 35 0.07%
153 komma 35 0.07%
154 långa 34 0.07%
155 sista 34 0.07%
156 din 34 0.07%
157 väg 34 0.07%
158 längre 34 0.07%
159 samma 34 0.07%
160 första 34 0.07%
161 ge 34 0.07%
162 kommer 34 0.07%
163 tre 34 0.07%
164 mannen 33 0.07%
165 ta 33 0.07%
166 kastade 33 0.07%
167 gjort 33 0.07%
168 tro 33 0.07%
169 åter 32 0.06%
170 föll 32 0.06%
171 hos 32 0.06%
172 varje 32 0.06%
173 alltid 32 0.06%
174 innan 32 0.06%
175 reste 31 0.06%
176 satte 31 0.06%
177 satt 31 0.06%
178 mer 31 0.06%
179 frågade 31 0.06%
180 omkring 31 0.06%
181 vände 30 0.06%
182 tills 30 0.06%
183 kände 30 0.06%
184 år 30 0.06%
185 Mile 30 0.06%
186 enda 30 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 På tro och loven (Norden) by Jack London

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.