Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) by Viktor Rydberg : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 56,941, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) to have a difficulty score of 71. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 71% 71
Vocabulary Difficulty 89% 89
Grammatical Difficulty 54% 54

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

89%

Vocabulary difficulty: 89%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden)'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 Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden):

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden): a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden):

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 56,941
Number of unique words 12,317
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 3,107
Number of very rare non-entity words 3,804
Number of sentences 9,240
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 12,070 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

54%

Grammatical difficulty: 54%

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 8
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.216312
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000379887
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000189944
MTLD Index 65
HDD Index 67
Yule's I Index 74
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 68

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) is 0.216312. 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 12,317, while the number of words is 56,941, so the TTR is 12,317 / 56,941 = 0.216312. 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, 12,317 / (56,941 * 56,941) = 0.00000379887), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 12,317 / 2 * (56,941 * 56,941) = 0.00000189944). 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 68 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 54.

Other Information about Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) by Viktor Rydberg

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Hvad som behöfver ändras skall ändras. - Vi böra dock gå varsamt tillväga, sade fru Margareta, och försöka litet i sänder. Annars är jag rädd, att far tager skada på något sätt. - Förstås, att vi gå varsamt tillväga. Det afgörande slaget skall uppskjutas, tills jag återvändt från Wittenherg och är magister. Då lär ingen kalla mig en pojke, som sätter sig upp emot sin far. Jag har alltid hedrat honom i mitt hjärta, men tillåter icke, att han bringar sig och oss i elände. - Som sagdt: vi måste visa all hofsamhet, sade mor. Jag är rädd, att far ännu går och sörjer öfver runstenen. ...

Top most frequently used words in Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) by Viktor Rydberg*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 2,237 3.93%
2 att 1,135 1.99%
3 som 966 1.7%
4 en 873 1.53%
5 det 784 1.38%
6 han 716 1.26%
7 med 678 1.19%
8 den 654 1.15%
9 af 635 1.12%
10 597 1.05%
11 till 593 1.04%
12 icke 541 0.95%
13 för 533 0.94%
14 är 512 0.9%
15 jag 504 0.89%
16 de 427 0.75%
17 sig 409 0.72%
18 var 408 0.72%
19 hade 377 0.66%
20 om 375 0.66%
21 ett 370 0.65%
22 du 343 0.6%
23 honom 279 0.49%
24 Lars 273 0.48%
25 har 248 0.44%
26 sin 242 0.43%
27 hans 238 0.42%
28 235 0.41%
29 mig 221 0.39%
30 men 207 0.36%
31 från 187 0.33%
32 där 185 0.32%
33 dem 174 0.31%
34 mäster 173 0.3%
35 vid 172 0.3%
36 eller 167 0.29%
37 157 0.28%
38 Gudmund 156 0.27%
39 skall 156 0.27%
40 sade 151 0.27%
41 öfver 147 0.26%
42 skulle 146 0.26%
43 man 143 0.25%
44 Margit 141 0.25%
45 Fabbe 136 0.24%
46 dig 135 0.24%
47 nu 134 0.24%
48 än 133 0.23%
49 hvad 123 0.22%
50 min 118 0.21%
51 när 115 0.2%
52 under 113 0.2%
53 mot 107 0.19%
54 hon 106 0.19%
55 ut 104 0.18%
56 ej 100 0.18%
57 utan 98 0.17%
58 vara 97 0.17%
59 vi 94 0.17%
60 upp 93 0.16%
61 ur 92 0.16%
62 in 90 0.16%
63 äro 88 0.15%
64 åt 87 0.15%
65 ha 87 0.15%
66 denna 87 0.15%
67 far 85 0.15%
68 äfven 85 0.15%
69 sina 84 0.15%
70 detta 84 0.15%
71 kan 83 0.15%
72 Svante 81 0.14%
73 herr 78 0.14%
74 vill 76 0.13%
75 Gunnar 76 0.13%
76 henne 75 0.13%
77 något 74 0.13%
78 här 74 0.13%
79 alla 73 0.13%
80 genom 73 0.13%
81 såg 72 0.13%
82 också 71 0.12%
83 ty 70 0.12%
84 efter 69 0.12%
85 göra 68 0.12%
86 vet 68 0.12%
87 Arvid 68 0.12%
88 voro 68 0.12%
89 sedan 65 0.11%
90 själf 65 0.11%
91 Slatte 65 0.11%
92 mycket 63 0.11%
93 andra 63 0.11%
94 kunde 63 0.11%
95 dess 63 0.11%
96 sitt 62 0.11%
97 oss 62 0.11%
98 mer 62 0.11%
99 Gud 62 0.11%
100 ville 62 0.11%
101 kom 61 0.11%
102 väl 61 0.11%
103 ju 59 0.1%
104 ni 58 0.1%
105 ord 56 0.1%
106 Sven 56 0.1%
107 ned 54 0.09%
108 din 54 0.09%
109 magister 51 0.09%
110 varit 50 0.09%
111 stod 49 0.09%
112 Ja 49 0.09%
113 någon 49 0.09%
114 deras 48 0.08%
115 gick 48 0.08%
116 hennes 47 0.08%
117 två 46 0.08%
118 år 46 0.08%
119 mellan 46 0.08%
120 doktor 45 0.08%
121 fram 43 0.08%
122 ingen 43 0.08%
123 hvilken 43 0.08%
124 43 0.08%
125 allt 42 0.07%
126 gjorde 42 0.07%
127 måste 42 0.07%
128 framför 42 0.07%
129 gång 42 0.07%
130 får 41 0.07%
131 blifvit 40 0.07%
132 Margareta 40 0.07%
133 sett 40 0.07%
134 se 40 0.07%
135 hos 40 0.07%
136 ehuru 39 0.07%
137 säger 38 0.07%
138 bland 38 0.07%
139 dessa 37 0.06%
140 komma 37 0.06%
141 gamla 37 0.06%
142 intet 37 0.06%
143 Ture 37 0.06%
144 annat 37 0.06%
145 några 36 0.06%
146 vår 36 0.06%
147 många 36 0.06%
148 säga 36 0.06%
149 dag 36 0.06%
150 kring 36 0.06%
151 hvars 35 0.06%
152 steg 35 0.06%
153 35 0.06%
154 satt 35 0.06%
155 rätt 35 0.06%
156 aldrig 35 0.06%
157 tid 35 0.06%
158 likväl 34 0.06%
159 skola 34 0.06%
160 gjort 34 0.06%
161 går 34 0.06%
162 länge 33 0.06%
163 tror 33 0.06%
164 er 33 0.06%
165 innan 33 0.06%
166 hand 32 0.06%
167 Drysius 32 0.06%
168 endast 32 0.06%
169 hvilka 32 0.06%
170 kommit 32 0.06%
171 ser 31 0.05%
172 fått 31 0.05%
173 gör 31 0.05%
174 Jönköping 31 0.05%
175 vore 30 0.05%
176 mitt 30 0.05%
177 barn 30 0.05%
178 folk 30 0.05%
179 därefter 30 0.05%
180 annan 30 0.05%

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 Vapensmeden (Hägringar från reformationstiden) by Viktor Rydberg

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.