Language through Literature
Russian classics, counted
This page is the ledger: the numbers this house is asked for, measured on the books themselves and printed where anyone can check them. Nothing here is estimated, averaged from elsewhere, or typed in by hand — every figure is computed from the same data files the reader is served, and moves when the corpus moves. The same table is a file, below.
The corpus, whole
114,550 running words across 8,637 counted sentences of 24 texts by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, containing 10,386 distinct lemmas — of which 4,731, 45.6%, occur exactly once. The vocabulary is ordered into a ladder of 7,000 rungs, each rung the word that opens the most whole sentences not yet readable; here is what each depth of it buys:
| Words known | Coverage of running text | Sentences with all dictionary words covered | Share of all sentences |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 39.3% | 612 | 7.1% |
| 250 | 55.0% | 1,142 | 13.2% |
| 500 | 67.0% | 1,784 | 20.7% |
| 1000 | 75.5% | 2,725 | 31.6% |
| 1500 | 80.7% | 3,388 | 39.2% |
| 2000 | 83.9% | 3,949 | 45.7% |
| 3000 | 86.6% | 4,967 | 57.5% |
| 4000 | 90.2% | 5,870 | 68.0% |
| 5000 | 93.4% | 6,490 | 75.1% |
| 6000 | 95.4% | 7,005 | 81.1% |
| 7000 | 96.9% | 7,435 | 86.1% |
Coverage is not comprehension. These counts describe a word list against a text. They do not test grammar, idiom or understanding, and they are not CEFR levels or measured learning gains.
The books, one by one
Two ways of asking what a book costs. Ladder to 95 / 98 is how many words of the ladder, first rung first, before that book's running text is 95% and 98% covered — the thresholds reading research treats as workable and comfortable. Readable at 1,000 is the share of its sentences in which the first thousand words leave no stranger at all. An em-dash means the whole ladder never gets there: that book's tail is vocabulary the rest of the shelf never uses.
| Book | Author | Words | Lemmas | Appear once | Ladder to 95 | Ladder to 98 | Readable at 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Толстый и тонкий free | А. П. Чехов | 511 | 268 | 70.5% | 5,930 | — | 43.0% |
| Смерть чиновника free | А. П. Чехов | 677 | 317 | 64.4% | 4,515 | 5,210 | 40.9% |
| Хамелеон free | А. П. Чехов | 901 | 403 | 67.5% | 4,882 | 6,176 | 41.3% |
| Лошадиная фамилия free | А. П. Чехов | 904 | 380 | 69.5% | 4,766 | 5,912 | 49.3% |
| Злоумышленник free | А. П. Чехов | 1,063 | 421 | 63.9% | 6,570 | — | 42.4% |
| Студент free | А. П. Чехов | 1,124 | 498 | 69.9% | 6,246 | — | 20.6% |
| Ванька free | А. П. Чехов | 1,153 | 556 | 71.9% | — | — | 5.9% |
| Спать хочется | А. П. Чехов | 1,570 | 611 | 64.6% | 5,585 | 6,607 | 24.9% |
| Мальчики | А. П. Чехов | 1,791 | 696 | 66.2% | 5,402 | — | 34.6% |
| Скрипка Ротшильда | А. П. Чехов | 3,017 | 1,014 | 62.4% | 5,157 | — | 20.8% |
| О любви | А. П. Чехов | 3,056 | 963 | 64.3% | 5,328 | — | 18.7% |
| После бала | Л. Н. Толстой | 3,075 | 966 | 64.5% | 6,594 | — | 18.3% |
| Крыжовник | А. П. Чехов | 3,241 | 1,118 | 64.8% | 6,894 | — | 22.6% |
| Медведь | А. П. Чехов | 3,647 | 1,025 | 59.5% | 5,041 | — | 55.4% |
| Душечка | А. П. Чехов | 3,850 | 1,201 | 62.5% | 5,476 | — | 29.6% |
| Анна на шее | А. П. Чехов | 3,935 | 1,294 | 64.7% | 6,466 | — | 24.3% |
| Человек в футляре | А. П. Чехов | 4,005 | 1,225 | 65.0% | 5,791 | — | 26.1% |
| Дама с собачкой | А. П. Чехов | 5,109 | 1,405 | 61.7% | 5,118 | — | 30.7% |
| Дом с мезонином | А. П. Чехов | 5,600 | 1,542 | 60.6% | 5,692 | — | 25.0% |
| Нос | Н. В. Гоголь | 7,645 | 1,893 | 60.2% | 6,213 | — | 25.1% |
| Шинель | Н. В. Гоголь | 10,007 | 2,313 | 60.5% | 6,783 | — | 11.2% |
| Первая любовь | И. С. Тургенев | 15,781 | 3,215 | 56.6% | 6,188 | — | 30.5% |
| Палата № 6 | А. П. Чехов | 16,043 | 3,339 | 55.3% | 6,184 | — | 28.9% |
| Белые ночи | Ф. М. Достоевский | 16,845 | 2,513 | 55.0% | 4,586 | 6,148 | 43.4% |
The same rows, said in sentences
«Толстый и тонкий» asks 5,930 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Смерть чиновника» asks 4,515 lemmas of you before it reads at 95 in a hundred, and 5,210 before 98.
«Хамелеон» asks 4,882 lemmas of you before it reads at 95 in a hundred, and 6,176 before 98.
«Лошадиная фамилия» asks 4,766 lemmas of you before it reads at 95 in a hundred, and 5,912 before 98.
«Злоумышленник» asks 6,570 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Студент» asks 6,246 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Ванька» is not read down by the ladder alone: all seven thousand rungs leave it at 94.7 in a hundred, and the rest of its vocabulary is its own.
«Спать хочется» asks 5,585 lemmas of you before it reads at 95 in a hundred, and 6,607 before 98.
«Мальчики» asks 5,402 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Скрипка Ротшильда» asks 5,157 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«О любви» asks 5,328 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«После бала» asks 6,594 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Крыжовник» asks 6,894 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Медведь» asks 5,041 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Душечка» asks 5,476 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Анна на шее» asks 6,466 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Человек в футляре» asks 5,791 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Дама с собачкой» asks 5,118 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Дом с мезонином» asks 5,692 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Нос» asks 6,213 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Шинель» asks 6,783 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Первая любовь» asks 6,188 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Палата № 6» asks 6,184 lemmas of you to read at 95 in a hundred; 98 lies beyond the ladder, in words the rest of the shelf never uses.
«Белые ночи» asks 4,586 lemmas of you before it reads at 95 in a hundred, and 6,148 before 98.
Can you read one of them yet?
The table says what each book asks; whether you hold it is a different question, and it has its own page. Mark forty words you know and the corpus answers with its own arithmetic — can you read this book yet?
The file
russian-classics-counted.csv — one row per book, the columns above, openable in any spreadsheet. The word lists that pair with it are published separately, with stress marks and meanings.
Method
Mined, never made. The corpus is 24 public-domain texts, entire and unabridged — no invented sentences, no simplified retellings, and if an adapted edition ever joins the shelf it will be labelled a retelling and excluded from every row of this page and its file. Lemmatisation and glossing are corrected through dictionary checks and reader feedback. Read the production method and limits. Tokenisation is the build's own, the same one the reader runs. Proper names are counted as covered running text, never as vocabulary to be learned. A sentence enters the sentence counts when it contains at least one dictionary word; a line of bare names or punctuation measures nothing. A sentence is fully readable at a given depth when every dictionary word in it stands within that many rungs of the ladder — the ordering in which each next word opens the most whole sentences, published as the word lists. The 95/98 thresholds are the working heuristic of the reading research (Hu & Nation); the argument for them is set out in the guide, and the two findings drawn from this table stand at half the words appear once and the short story is not the easy one.
The other four rooms keep their own ledgers, in their own terms — Grimm, counted, Quiroga, counted, Perrault and Daudet, counted and Collodi to Pirandello, counted.