First Steps in Old English

by Stephen Pollington

A complete, well presented and easy to use Old English language course that contains all the exercises and texts needed to learn Old English. The course has been designed to be of help to a wide range of students, from those who are teaching themselves at home, to undergraduates who are learning Old English as part of their English degree course.

Genres: Language, Linguistics, History, Nonfiction, Anglo Saxon

Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

Reviews

[Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best concise book on learning Old English out there.

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Towards the end the learning curve gets super steep, maybe though I just pushed faster then I was ready for. However, the drawback that keeps this from getting a five is the obfuscation of the vocabulary to be successful in the later lessons. I found that many of the words I needed were introduced in OE, during the translation and then I couldn't always find them in the dictionary. Still, was fun to brush off my linguistic skills.

[Solarkat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicely done intro to OE. Practice exercises very relevant and straightforward. Plenty of OE texts at the back for additional work.

[Errol Orhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant starting point for anyone interested in learning a new language and making steady progress. Although guess it should be easier for native speakers of a Germanic language to pick up on grammatical subtleties, the author provides clear instructions, useful assignments and enjoyable texts to enable learners to put their new knowledge into practice. Finally, the afterword is basically a final piece of advice on how to proceed and expand your comprehension of Anglo-Saxon.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just couldn't find the time to complete this, but I like the way it's laid out.

[Winnie Thornton]

Read parts of this for an Anglo-Saxon elective.