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How hard is L'Étranger to read?
The Stranger
By Albert Camus · In French
- Words for 95% of the text
- 4,670
- Sentence length
- 14.9 words
- Words beyond the 5,000 most common
- 47 per 1,000
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Read in the original French, Camus's short first novel sits at the beginner level of our library. Meursault tells his own story in plain, short sentences with little dialogue, and the great majority of the running words belong to the commonest few thousand; what remains to learn is mostly concrete everyday vocabulary, such as the funeral, the bus, the tram and the concierge, then the words of the investigation and the courtroom in the second part. The flat, detached style that critics have long noted is exactly what makes the book approachable, so it suits a learner moving from graded readers to a first real novel.
MnemoRead measured this book from its full text: how many of the language's most common words you need to follow it, and how long its sentences are.
How hard this book is
Easier than 98% of our French books
The score rises with the words needed to cover 95% of the text and with sentence length. It is the same in every language. Books within about ten points of each other read about as hard.
- Words for 95% of the text
- 4,670
- Sentence length
- 14.9 words
- One sentence in ten runs past 26 words
- Length
- Short
- 34,902 words · < 3 hours
- Words beyond the 5,000 most common
- 47 per 1,000
- Dialogue
- 10%
Vocabulary needed
Share of the text covered by the most common words of the language.
Names of people and places count as known words.
Show the numbers
| Most common words | Share of the text |
|---|---|
| 100 | 68.4% |
| 250 | 75.9% |
| 500 | 80.5% |
| 1,000 | 85.8% |
| 2,000 | 90.3% |
| 3,000 | 92.7% |
| 5,000 | 95.3% |
| 7,500 | 96.7% |
| 10,000 | 97.6% |
| 15,000 | 98.6% |
| 20,000 | 99.0% |
| 30,000 | 99.6% |
CEFR word lists
Share of the text each level's words cover, with the levels below it. The book's vocabulary is rated at the first level to reach 95%.
Words to learn first
The words this book uses most that are not among the 5,000 most common of the language, with how often each appears.
- concierge×26
- enterrement×13
- autobus×12
- pourvoi×9
- revolver×9
- sueur×9
- brusquement×8
- penché×8
- aumônier×7
- cravate×7
- détourné×7
- essuyer×7
- fumé×7
- soulier×7
- tramway×7
- vieillard×7
- écrier×7
- charogne×6
- interrogatoire×6
- quelquefois×6
Books at the same level in our library
Free to read, with the closest scores to this one.