The Italian reading room
What level are Capuana's fairy tales?
Short answer: the gentlest reading on this shelf, and by the shelf's own count late A1 going on A2. The room reads Capuana's four fairy tales between step 2 and step 6 of its eight, and a reader who finishes the last of them, «Ranocchino», holds 1,349 dictionary words: past this house's working A1 figure of 750 and short of its A2 figure of 1,500. With every word glossed, a reader can start well before either. The long answer is the one worth having, because a level letter on a book is a claim about a reader, and because one thing about these tales is harder than the letter says.
Why nobody can honestly give you just a letter
The CILS and the CELI are real exams, set by the Università per Stranieri di Siena and the Università per Stranieri di Perugia. But neither university publishes a counted word list for its levels, so every «A2 means 1,500 words» you will find is somebody's estimate. What follows is measured against this shelf and says so: the exams named are real, and the thresholds beside them are this house's working figures applied to texts that have actually been counted.
What the eight tales measure
| Tale | By | Words | Distinct words | Words per sentence | Met once | Own words to 95% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cappuccetto Rosso | Collodi | 741 | 226 | 15.4 | 52% | 189 |
| La piccola vedetta lombarda | De Amicis | 1353 | 430 | 10.8 | 53% | 363 |
| Le arance d’oro | Capuana | 1794 | 398 | 7.9 | 45% | 309 |
| L’uovo nero | Capuana | 1943 | 462 | 7.7 | 42% | 365 |
| Spera di sole | Capuana | 2115 | 516 | 9.6 | 47% | 411 |
| Ranocchino | Capuana | 2161 | 522 | 8.1 | 48% | 414 |
| Il piccolo scrivano fiorentino | De Amicis | 2422 | 658 | 19.7 | 55% | 537 |
| La giara | Pirandello | 3153 | 813 | 10.2 | 56% | 656 |
7.7 to 19.7 words a sentence. That spread is the part a level letter hides, and it follows the author: 15.4 across Collodi's, 8.3 across Capuana's, 15.2 across De Amicis's, 10.2 across Pirandello's. Every one of Capuana's tales runs to fewer words a sentence than any other tale on the shelf.
Words that come back
The other thing that makes a text kind is repetition. In each of Capuana's tales between 42% and 48% of the dictionary words appear exactly once — a smaller share than in any other tale on the shelf — and 38% of the words in his four come back in another of them. 3 of the four have the formula of the book's title, «C’era una volta», in their first paragraph. The room's own price shows it: in the order it reads them his tales cost 284, 213, 209, 168 new dictionary words, each cheaper than the one before.
How much of each author a word list opens
Take the words in the order that finishes whole sentences soonest — the shelf's word list — and ask how many of each author's sentences are left with nothing unknown in them. (This is the list's order, not the order the room's lessons teach in; the table further down is that one.)
| Author | With the first 750 words | With the first 1,500 words |
|---|---|---|
| Carlo Collodi | 58% | 100% |
| Luigi Capuana | 71% | 95% |
| Edmondo De Amicis | 49% | 73% |
| Luigi Pirandello | 64% | 87% |
The passato remoto
Most learners meet it late, as a tense to recognise rather than use. These tales are told in it — all of them, not only the fairy tales. Counting only forms that can be nothing else — the auxiliaries' «fu», «furono», «ebbe», «ebbero», and the «-ò» of verbs in «-are» — the shelf has at least 357, 179 of them in Capuana, and author by author the rate runs from 21.2 to 24.6 in every thousand words. The commonest are «andò», «tornò», «gridò», «domandò». A reader who knows only «è andato» will meet «andò» in the first pages; the room glosses each form back to its infinitive, which is most of what recognising the tense requires.
Where the shelf carries a reader
| Band | Exam | Words | Of this shelf it opens | What it reads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | CILS A1 | 750 | 39.5% | Whole sentences, and the shape of the language. |
| A2 | CILS A2 | 1,500 | 84.5% | Ordinary narration: who did what, to whom, when. |
Those figures follow the room's reading order, tale by tale. The whole shelf is 2,015 distinct words, short of the 2,500 this house takes as its working B1 figure.
The spelling is modern
These are not old-spelling texts. Across all eight tales a modern dictionary would file 22 printed forms differently — «Ajuto» for «Aiuto» is one — and the ledger lists them all.
The words that are harder than they look
920 of the shelf's 2,015 words — 46% — appear exactly once. No frequency list reaches them and no course prepares you for them, and they are why a glossed text matters more than a level.
If you have been set these tales
«Cappuccetto Rosso» is 741 words and is free and entire here, with no account — Collodi's, not Capuana's, and the place the room begins. The opening scene of «Le arance d’oro» is free after it. The reading order prices every tale in the words you do not yet have, and the ledger carries the method and a CSV.