Language through Literature
Хамелеон — Chameleon
A police inspector changes his mind about a dog — depending on whose dog it turns out to be. The classic on rank-worship.
Source trail: compare the public-domain Russian text in Russian Wikisource. The reader's text has been proofread and divided into learnable sentences; it is not simplified.
How long «Хамелеон» is, and how hard
| Length in Russian | 901 running words · 151 sentences · about 4 printed pages |
|---|---|
| Time to read | about 10 minutes at a learner's pace with the glosses to hand — not a native's pace, which would be a third of that |
| Different words | 403 dictionary words, averaging 6.0 words a sentence |
| Words that appear once | 272 of them — 67%. A word met once is a word you will not learn from this text, which is why length alone does not say how hard a story is (the arithmetic) |
| Difficulty | level 1 of 3 on this shelf · 3 of 24 by length |
| By its own vocabulary | 88.8% of its dictionary words carry 95% of the text — 21 of 24 on this shelf, most forgiving first (why the short story is not the easy one) |
How much of it you would already understand
Each row is the most common words in these 24 books, in order of how much Russian they open, measured against Хамелеон itself — not against Russian in general.
| If you know | you can read |
|---|---|
| 500 words | 64.2% of the words on the page |
| 1000 words | 75.5% of the words on the page |
| 2000 words | 83.5% of the words on the page |
| 3000 words | 87.6% of the words on the page |
| 5000 words | 95.0% of the words on the page |
Counted the other way: 358 of this story's own 403 words, most frequent first, carry 95% of it — 223 carry 80%. Ninety-five per cent is the coverage at which reading stops being decoding, though the threshold is softer than it is usually quoted: how that number is arrived at.
Shorter and longer on the same shelf
Толстый и тонкий — 511 words, freeСмерть чиновника — 677 words, free Лошадиная фамилия — 904 words, freeЗлоумышленник — 1063 words, free
How it begins — Russian with English, sentence by sentence
Через базарную площадь идёт полицейский надзиратель Очумелов в новой шинели и с узелком в руке.
Across the market square walks the police superintendent Ochumelov, in a new greatcoat and with a little bundle in his hand.
За ним шагает рыжий городовой с решетом, доверху наполненным конфискованным крыжовником.
Behind him strides a red-haired policeman with a sieve filled to the brim with confiscated gooseberries.
Кругом тишина…
All around, silence…
На площади ни души…
Not a soul on the square…
Открытые двери лавок и кабаков глядят на свет божий уныло, как голодные пасти; около них нет даже нищих.
The open doors of the shops and taverns look out upon God’s world as dismally as hungry maws; there are not even any beggars near them.
— Так ты кусаться, окаянная?
“So you’d bite, would you, you cursed thing?”
— слышит вдруг Очумелов.
Ochumelov suddenly hears.
— Ребята, не пущай её!
“Lads, don’t let her go!
Нынче не велено кусаться!
Biting’s not allowed nowadays!
Держи!
Hold her!
А… а!
A… ah!”
Слышен собачий визг.
A dog’s yelping is heard.
Read it free, in the room. The first instalment needs no account; a free account opens the whole story. Every word is glossed where it stands, the English is a tap away and never in your eyeline until you ask, and the audio reads the lines to you. The complete text, with the English under every sentence, is on its own page with no account at all.
Is it at your level?
This is one of the easiest complete works of Russian literature there is — 901 words, short sentences, everyday vocabulary. A strong A2 learner can walk through it with the glosses; at B1 it starts to feel like reading. The reader marks every word by whether you have met it before, so you can see the cost of a story before you commit an evening to it.
Before a class reads this
Modern Russian has lost some of what is on this page. Counted from the glosses themselves: 4 words no longer in use, and 1 older ending on words that survive.
Words modern Russian no longer has
| Word | In this text | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| е́жели | 6 | if (archaic/colloquial for если) |
| вышепи́санный | 1 | the above-written, aforesaid (nom m sg) (arch.) |
| сего́ | 1 | this, of this (gen m/n of сей) (arch.) |
| сига́ркой | 1 | small cigar (instr sg) |
Old endings on words still in use
The word is current; the ending is not. A student who knows the modern form needs the ending pointed at, not the meaning taught.
| Form | In this text | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| надзира́тель | 2 | police inspector, overseer (nom sg) (archaic) |
More like this: all 24 stories, or the numbers behind them — how much Russian you need to read Chekhov.