The German reading room
Grimm, counted
The German room's ledger: eight tales — the Brothers Grimm and Johann Peter Hebel — counted exactly as they are served in the reading room. Nothing on this page is estimated or typed in by hand; every figure is computed from the room's own data files when the page is asked for, and the same table is a file.
The shelf, whole
8,791 running words across 368 sentences, containing 1,243 distinct lemmas — of which 50.7% occur exactly once across the whole shelf. The same long-tail arithmetic that governs the Russian shelf governs this one, at a smaller scale.
The tales, one by one
Own lemmas to 95 is how many of a tale's own dictionary words, commonest first, cover 95% of its running text — the share of its vocabulary a reader must hold before the reading is close work rather than decoding. The room has no cross-shelf ladder yet, so no such column is printed here; where a number does not exist, it is not invented.
| Tale | Author | Words | Sentences | Lemmas | Appear once | Own lemmas to 95 | Words per sentence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Der süße Brei free | Brüder Grimm | 222 | 6 | 99 | 63% | 88 | 37.0 |
| Die Sterntaler | Brüder Grimm | 298 | 11 | 126 | 59% | 112 | 27.1 |
| Kannitverstan | Johann Peter Hebel | 845 | 32 | 321 | 62% | 279 | 26.4 |
| Rumpelstilzchen | Brüder Grimm | 1,004 | 38 | 284 | 55% | 234 | 26.4 |
| Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten | Brüder Grimm | 1,189 | 45 | 373 | 62% | 314 | 26.4 |
| Rotkäppchen | Brüder Grimm | 1,264 | 59 | 345 | 54% | 282 | 21.4 |
| Der Froschkönig | Brüder Grimm | 1,291 | 54 | 348 | 51% | 284 | 23.9 |
| Hänsel und Gretel | Brüder Grimm | 2,678 | 123 | 554 | 47% | 421 | 21.8 |
The same rows, said in sentences
«Der süße Brei» carries 222 words in 6 sentences; 88 of its 99 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Die Sterntaler» carries 298 words in 11 sentences; 112 of its 126 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Kannitverstan» carries 845 words in 32 sentences; 279 of its 321 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Rumpelstilzchen» carries 1,004 words in 38 sentences; 234 of its 284 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten» carries 1,189 words in 45 sentences; 314 of its 373 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Rotkäppchen» carries 1,264 words in 59 sentences; 282 of its 345 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Der Froschkönig» carries 1,291 words in 54 sentences; 284 of its 348 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
«Hänsel und Gretel» carries 2,678 words in 123 sentences; 421 of its 554 lemmas read it at 95 in a hundred.
The file
grimm-counted.csv — one row per tale, the columns above, openable in any spreadsheet.
Method
Mined, never made. The tales are public-domain texts, entire and in the German they were printed in — no invented sentences, no simplified retellings, and if a retold edition ever joins the shelf it will be labelled nacherzählt and excluded from every row of this page and its file. Words are counted with the same tokenizer the room's gloss apparatus uses, and mapped to dictionary forms through the room's own form-to-lemma table, so these figures and the ones on each tale's own page are the same arithmetic. The Russian shelf keeps the fuller ledger, with its coverage ladder — Russian classics, counted — and the Spanish, French and Italian rooms keep theirs: Quiroga, counted, Perrault and Daudet, counted and Collodi to Pirandello, counted.