The French reading room
Les Fées — The Fairies
How long «Les Fées» is, and how hard
| Length in French | 860 running words · 41 sentences · about 3 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 8 minutes at a learner's pace, with the glosses to hand |
| Different words | 243 dictionary words, averaging 21.0 words a sentence |
| Words glossed | 243 of 243 — every one that appears in the tale |
| Words that appear once | 137 — 56%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text alone |
| Where it stands | 2 of 8 by length in the French room |
200 of this tale's own 243 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it; 89 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 «Les Fées» in 4 scenes. The headings are the house's own; the sentence counts are the tale's.
| Scene | In French | Sentences |
|---|---|---|
| At the Fountain | À la fontaine | 10 |
| Pearls and Diamonds | Des perles et des diamants | 10 |
| Fanchon’s Turn | Au tour de Fanchon | 14 |
| The King’s Son | Le fils du roi | 7 |
How it begins
Il était une fois une veuve qui avait deux filles : l’aînée lui ressemblait si fort d’humeur et de visage, que, qui la voyait, voyait la mère.
Once upon a time there was a widow who had two daughters: the elder was so like her in temper and in face that whoever saw her saw the mother.
That first sentence is the free sample, and the only one on this page. «Les Fées» is part of the library — the eight French tales and the Italian, 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 five rooms. What the library costs. «La Dernière Classe» is free, entire, if you would rather read the room before you buy it, and the opening scene of «Le petit Chaperon rouge» after it.
Shorter and longer in the same room
Le petit Chaperon rouge — 683 words Le maître Chat ou le Chat botté — 1,586 wordsLe curé de Cucugnan — 1,705 words
All eight French tales · Charles Perrault · the shelf, counted