Word Count

You may find that the figures for unique word counts on LNDb differ from those advertised by the novella authors themselves. There is a simple reason for this: different authors have different methods for arriving at the unique word count. No way is more or less correct than another, but to have consistent data for LNDb, it was necessary to establish a standard methodology for the unique word count. In the interest of transparency, a complete word list is provided with each novella so that it is clear how the numbers were obtained.

Core Unique Word Count

Essentially, the core unique word count is the number of words with which a reader should be familiar in order to read the novella fluently. This does not include proper nouns or glossed words.

The choice not to include these involves some assumptions. By not including proper nouns (or adjectives), it assumes that these words do not require lexical knowledge in the same way that common nouns do. By not including glossed words, it assumes that the reader will be able to use the gloss to immediately fill in any lexical gaps, and thus the question of the readers' familiarity with the word is moot. When an author chooses to gloss a word, they are indicating that a reader does not need prior knowledge of that word in order to fluently read the novella.

The main drawback of not counting glosses is that they are of no help to a reader who does not know the language of the glosses, usually English. Teachers who serve populations of English language learners are encouraged to make gloss supplements in other languages for their students to use while reading the novella, or even have students make them.

Total Unique Word Count

The total unique word count is every unique word that the reader will find in the text—proper nouns, glossed words, everything. A large discrepancy between the core word count and total word count would mean that there are a great deal of glossed words and/or proper nouns.

Total Overall Word Count

The total overall word count is the number of words in the novella from beginning to end—that is, the total length of the novella in words.

What about cognates?

Cognates are not considered to be part of the core word count in LNDb. The primary reason was that finding an operational definition of a cognate proved to be challenging in the absence of research on the comprehensibility of different types of Latin cognates. Additionally, however, treating a word as a cognate makes several assumptions regarding the prior knowledge of the reader:

• It assumes that the reader has the English vocabulary knowledge to make connections between English words and Latin words. This may not be the case, particularly if the reader's native language is not English.
• For stories in a Classical setting, it assumes that the reader has the cultural background knowledge to understand words pertaining to Classical culture. If a reader does not know what a toga, a forum, or a gladiator is, they will not understand the Latin words toga, forum, and gladiātor. 
• It may assume that a word is a recognizable cognate in all of its forms, when this may not be the case. For example, a reader may recognize that flōrēs means "flowers" based on the connection with "floral," but may have more trouble recognizing flōs as a cognate of the same word.

There are a few technical details that may account for discrepancies between the authors' counts and the LNDb count:

• Different forms of the same word generally are counted as one word for the unique word counts. Thus est, esse, erat, fuissēmus, etc. are all counted together as one word (sum). The different forms of the pronouns were counted together (e.g. mē and mihi are counted with ego; all the forms of is, hic, ille, quī, and so on are counted together; etc.).
• Irregular comparatives and superlatives such as bonus, melior, and optimus are counted as three separate words, because they are more likely to be learned as individual lexical units. On the other hand, regular comparatives and superlatives are counted together (e.g. laetior and laetissimus were counted along with laetus).
• Adjectives and adverbs are counted separately (e.g. laetus and laetē are two separate words, as are celer and celeriter).
• Masculine and feminine versions of the same noun are counted separately (e.g. amīcus and amīca).
• Diminutives are counted separately (i.e. puerulus is a different word from puer).
• Homonyms with two distinct meanings are counted separately (e.g. the two meanings of cum, the two meanings of quod).
• If a word is used both as a proper noun and a common noun, the two uses are counted separately. For example, Amor (Cupid, god of love) is a different word from amor (love).
• Enclitics (–ne and –que) are words.
• All interjections are words, including those unattested in Classical Latin (e.g. mmm, rawr).
• Words where letters are repeated for comic effect are not separate words (e.g. volōōōōōōō is a form of volō; hahahahahae is a form of hahae).
• If a word's only use in the text is as a proper noun, it counts as a proper noun. For example, if the word amphitheātrum only appears in reference to the Amphitheātrum Flāvium, then amphitheātrum counts as a proper noun. As another example, if a reference is made to Star Trek with the title translated into Latin as Iter Stellāre, and the word iter only appears in this context, then iter counts as a proper noun.
• Words in chapter titles and footnotes are not counted in any word count. Also not counted are characters' names that indicate the speaker of a direct quote (e.g. in "Publius: 'cūr tū lacrimās?'" The word Publius is not counted in any word count.)

Glosses

• A word was counted as glossed if, at its first appearance in the novella, a translation into English or a picture clearly linked to the word was found on the same page.
• Glosses meant to explain an unusual form of the word were not counted as glosses for the word per se (e.g. providing a translation of fuissēmus as "we had been" does not constitute a gloss for sum).
• In order for a picture to constitute a gloss, the picture had to be unambiguously linked to the  meaning of an individual word, such as by a label on the picture or an arrow pointing from the word to the picture, and not be contingent on the reader’s understanding of other words. A picture of a fish with the word piscis, separated from the narrative, constitutes a gloss. The phrase “Ecce piscis” within the narrative followed by a picture of a fish does not constitute a gloss, because an assumption is made about the reader’s knowledge of the word ecce, and the connection between the word and the picture may not be obvious to all readers.