La Barbe-Bleue — Bluebeard
How long «La Barbe-Bleue» is, and how hard
| Length in French | 1804 running words · 69 sentences · about 7 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 16 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 416 dictionary words, averaging 26.1 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 416 of 416 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 221 — 53%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 6 of 8 by length in the French room |
326 of this tale's own 416 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 126 carry 80%. Hold those and the reading is close work rather than decoding. French glues its small words to the next one, and these counts take them apart the way a dictionary does: «l’» and «d’» are words of their own here, filed under «le» and «de».
Its chapters
The room reads «La Barbe-Bleue» in 6 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In French | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| The Man with the Blue Beard | L’homme à la barbe bleue | 9 |
| The Keys | Les clefs | 8 |
| The Little Closet | Le petit cabinet | 7 |
| The Stained Key | La clef tachée | 17 |
| Sister Anne | Ma sœur Anne | 21 |
| The Two Horsemen | Les deux cavaliers | 7 |
How it begins
Il était une fois un homme qui avait de belles maisons à la ville et à la campagne, de la vaisselle d’or et d’argent, des meubles en broderies, et des carrosses tout dorés.
Once upon a time there was a man who had fine houses in town and in the country, gold and silver plate, embroidered furniture, and coaches gilded all over.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «La Barbe-Bleue» is part of the library — the eight French tales and the Spanish, German and Russian shelves, every word glossed, sentence-by-sentence English — for €5 a month or €39 a year, cancel whenever you like, one subscription for all four rooms. What the library costs. «Le petit Chaperon rouge» is free, entire, if you would rather read the room before you buy it, and the opening scene of «Les Fées» after it.
Shorter and longer in the same room
Le curé de Cucugnan — 1705 wordsLa Dernière Classe — 1755 words La chèvre de monsieur Seguin — 2059 wordsCendrillon — 2208 words
All eight French tales · Charles Perrault · the shelf, counted