La Dernière Classe — The Last Lesson
How long «La Dernière Classe» is, and how hard
| Length in French | 1755 running words · 98 sentences · about 7 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 16 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 486 dictionary words, averaging 17.9 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 486 of 486 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 277 — 57%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 5 of 8 by length in the French room |
399 of this tale's own 486 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 172 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 Dernière Classe» in 4 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In French | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| Late for School | En retard | 11 |
| Like a Sunday Morning | Un matin de dimanche | 34 |
| The French Lesson | La leçon de français | 42 |
| Noon | Midi | 11 |
How it begins
Ce matin-là, j’étais très en retard pour aller à l’école, et j’avais grand-peur d’être grondé, d’autant que M. Hamel nous avait dit qu’il nous interrogerait sur les participes, et je n’en savais pas le premier mot.
That morning I was very late for school, and I was terribly afraid of a scolding, all the more because Monsieur Hamel had told us he would question us on participles, and I did not know the first word of them.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «La Dernière Classe» 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 maître Chat ou le Chat botté — 1586 wordsLe curé de Cucugnan — 1705 words La Barbe-Bleue — 1804 wordsLa chèvre de monsieur Seguin — 2059 words
All eight French tales · Alphonse Daudet · the shelf, counted