French reading difficulty
Du côté de chez Swann
Reading Du côté de chez Swann means meeting about 168,591 words, 81.4% of which are built from the two thousand commonest words of the language. It is measured at 59/100 against the other books on this shelf. At a learner's pace it is roughly 22 h of reading.
| Total words | 168,591 |
|---|---|
| Distinct words | 15,211 |
| Difficulty | 59/100 |
| Time to read | 22 h |
| Genre | Fiction |
Vocabulary diversity
15,211 distinct words across 168,591 words of text. Longer books will almost always show more, so this is worth comparing only between books of a similar length.
How much of it you would already know
81.4% of the running text is built from the two thousand commonest words in the language. That is the measurement this shelf can make honestly: no CEFR-graded wordlist exists for it, so no CEFR level is claimed.
How it reads
| Average sentence | 35.9 words |
|---|---|
| Sentence length, 99th percentile | 160 words |
| Average word | 4.57 letters |
| Dialogue | 35.2% of the text |
Where it gets harder
The book was split into ten equal spans and each measured on its own. Reading left to right, the scores are 59, 63, 61, 63, 56, 53, 53, 55, 51, 62. The hardest span is the second and the easiest is the ninth, so a sample from the opening is not always a fair test of the whole book.
The words it leans on
Words that recur in this book and sit above the everyday vocabulary. These are the ones worth tapping the first time they appear:
- 1 — grand’mère, peintre, aujourd’hui, piano, grand’tante, relations, pianiste, jalousie
- 2 — cuisine, soirs, causer, différent, clocher, sonate, cocher, rappelait
- 3 — douloureux, pensant, cessé, fidèles, pensais, reflet, sentais, ajoutait
Where to get it, free and legally
This book is in the public domain. Download it as an EPUB from Project Gutenberg, then open it in ClickBook.
Reading it without stopping every line
At 18.6% uncommon words, a book this size will still hand you words you do not know — that is what makes it worth reading. What slows people down is not meeting the word, it is leaving the page to look it up. ClickBook explains the word where it stands, using the sentence around it, and you keep reading.