Le curé de Cucugnan — The Priest of Cucugnan
How long «Le curé de Cucugnan» is, and how hard
| Length in French | 1705 running words · 156 sentences · about 7 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 16 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 516 dictionary words, averaging 10.9 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 516 of 516 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 336 — 65%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 4 of 8 by length in the French room |
431 of this tale's own 516 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 178 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 «Le curé de Cucugnan» in 5 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In French | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| The Good Priest | Le bon curé | 9 |
| At Heaven’s Gate | À la porte du paradis | 33 |
| The Silver Door | La porte d’argent | 43 |
| The Great Gateway | Le grand portail | 35 |
| Row by Row | Rang par rang | 29 |
How it begins
Tous les ans, à la Chandeleur, les poètes provençaux publient en Avignon un joyeux petit livre rempli jusqu’aux bords de beaux vers et de jolis contes.
Every year, at Candlemas, the Provençal poets publish in Avignon a merry little book filled to the brim with fine verses and pretty tales.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «Le curé de Cucugnan» 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
Les Fées — 860 wordsLe maître Chat ou le Chat botté — 1586 words La Dernière Classe — 1755 wordsLa Barbe-Bleue — 1804 words
All eight French tales · Alphonse Daudet · the shelf, counted