Tuesday, August 2, 2016

5000 French Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest

Here's how this list was made: 1) I grabbed a list with the 4000 most frequently used French words -- sorted from the most frequently used, to the least. 2) I grabbed 60 000 translated french sentences from the internet (no longer than 6 words)
3) I wrote a program that assigns a Frequency Rank Number to each word from every sentence, this Frequency Rank Number based on the list mentioned on item "1)" 4) This program calculates the average value of the all the words' Frequency Rank Numbers. And assigns this value to the sentence. The result is that if a sentence contains advanced words, the sentence will have a high Average Frequency Rank Number. If a sentence contains only beginner words, the AFRN will be low. 5) Finally, I sorted the sentences: from the ones with the lowest AFRN, to the highest. The end result is that this list begins with very, very simple sentences, and new words get slowly introduced as you progress.

The best part is, an expanded version of this list(with audio!) is available for you to study on the learning software Anki:
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1089240419
For free, of course.

If you don't have Anki, you can download here: http://ankisrs.net/


To view in a big screen, click the "See Original" button.



These sentences can be studied on the learning software Anki:
For free, of course.

If you do not have Anki, you can download it here:
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15 comments:

  1. TheFreedomSkaterOctober 10, 2016 at 9:04 PM

    This is a great idea, but I have a suggestion: I've played around with your list in excel and discovered that there are only 1367 unique words in the 10,000 sentence version released on Anki Web. That means, in theory, that all words should be possible to cover in 1367 sentences or less. I can imagine somewhere around 700-1000 sentences would do the trick, since high frequency words will be repeated in many sentences. In effect - one could learn 1367 high frequency words, in context and with audio, with about 1000 sentences. That'd be awesome! It's less daunting and removes repeats. What do you think? I'd happily pay for that list!

    - Austin Szelkowski

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    1. NeriOctober 11, 2016 at 6:13 AM

      I thought about that a while ago when I was studying german, and I made this deck:

      https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/857119063

      This deck was made in a very similar way to what you are describing; I will do a similar one in French.

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    2. TheFreedomSkaterOctober 11, 2016 at 1:04 PM

      Thanks for the quick response, Neri!

      I think you think like I do. I'm currently working on a project to get actual native speaker voice overs of example sentences for the first 2500 or first 5000 French words. Unfortunately, one can only find the audio for the vocab word itself right now - but not the example sentences. I have found, as you seem to have, that "sentence mining" is a powerful way to learn through context.

      I wonder: Did you pay voice over artists or translators for the German sentences in the deck you just linked to, or did you find a shockingly good computer program to read them? That sounded incredibly human (if a tiny bit monotone).

      I'd love to hear how you did it. It might help me more easily produce what I'm trying to do with the French frequency deck. I'd be happy to share the finished product with you, if it's of use.

      Better yet - I'd be thrilled if you were to do the same as you did for the German frequency list for the French one! I highly suggest the list generated by "A Frequency Dictionary of French" from the Routledge Foundation, if you haven't seen or used it. The corpus and list construction process was both balanced and impressive. You can see the best of what's currently available for the French version of that Frequency Dictionary here:

      https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1467326161

      Just needs good voice overs for example sentences (even more important in French than German), and it'd be gold!

      Here's hoping!! :)

      - Austin

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    3. TheFreedomSkaterOctober 11, 2016 at 1:08 PM

      Oops - didn't see your last bit there - about planning to do a similar one in French. That'd be awesome if you did that! I wonder if it's possible to keep it a little closer to the actual number of words though. As in: 2500 or 5000 sentences paired to 2500 or 5000 words?

      If you use the link I gave for the Routledge Foundation French Fequency deck already on Anki, there's already example sentences paired to the word. I guess I'm unsure if you are find audio that already exists for each word, or if you are using a really good computerized reading program.

      Would love to be your "informed cheerleader" on this!

      - Austin

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    4. NeriOctober 14, 2016 at 2:44 PM

      Here is what you asked:

      https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/58999038
      https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/893324022


      Also, you can add audio to decks with this add-on:
      https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/301952613

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    5. UnknownNovember 2, 2016 at 7:15 AM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. TheFreedomSkaterOctober 14, 2016 at 3:06 PM

    Wow! That was quick. Thanks!

    You must have a great voice reading program. It's not perfect, but it's probably the best I've heard.

    Thanks so much for taking the time to do this for me! Do you have a paypal account I could send a donation to as a thank you?

    - Austin

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    1. NeriOctober 21, 2016 at 8:49 AM

      You can repay by rating the deck on Anki. that is enough for me~ ;)

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  3. TheFreedomSkaterOctober 23, 2016 at 1:40 PM

    Thanks again for everything. I'm heading over to leave a great review on the deck now!

    FYI: The deck starts out of order, with something like the 40th most frequent word. I think you accidentally uploaded it with your review times on it (after having tested it, I assume). I re-imported it on my end, so I'm fine, but other users might be confused as to why the deck doesn't start at word number one.

    Take care, and I'll keep you in my contact list for future talk about frequency lists, language learning, and the like. I've enjoyed this interaction immensely!

    - Austin

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  4. EnjuchanMarch 12, 2017 at 10:31 AM

    Hi Neri,

    Thank you so much! I am starting French so that would be so helpful. Is there something like this for Japanese? I saw the frequency list, but this sorting with example sentences from easiest to hardest would be a amazing. Is it possible to create that? If so, how can I compensate you for your hard work?

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  5. MariuszApril 2, 2017 at 5:47 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. MariuszApril 19, 2017 at 7:49 AM

    Hello!
    Thank you for Your Great Job !
    I can't wait for part 3 of "16000 French sentences sorted from easiest to hardest" Any chance for it in the nearest future ?
    Best regards !
    Mariusz

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