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Old English
Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. A "Teach Yourself" book, in good, clean & sound condition. Bright blue & yellow d/w has a few small nicks to extremities.
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193 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 4, 2014
This book is excellent in some ways, but poor in many others. Its first flaw is that it is marketed towards beginners, when I find the book to be quite intermediate. As an intermediate student, I have no problem with this, for I have chosen this book for the purpose of continuing my studies; yet I find that it would be rather difficult for a beginner to follow along with the explanations and exercises.
The book attempts to gradually introduce grammar, yet I find its attempt rather poor. This is mainly due to its poor organization. Chapter four introduces the verb, and from this chapter I quote: "The verbal system of OE is complicated, and ten chapters of this book will be required for its full discussion." In the mean-time, it simply gives a few conjugation tables for common verbs. Hereafter, verbs are not mentioned again until chapter eight; in between these chapters are the declensions of nouns, which is something that should have been taught from the very beginning. Then, we learn about i-mutation in chapter twelve, which is a criminal offense to me. I-mutation should either be taught before or during the discussion of verbs. Otherwise, the student is going to be confused and wondering why the verbs so often change vowels in the present stem.
The exercises are very advanced. Right off the bat, before we are given an explanation as to how to conjugate a verb, and having only been given a minimal introduction to the declension of weak nouns, we are given an exercise: a translation exercise of the parable of the prodigal son. This is far too advanced. I have no idea how a beginning student could possibly be capable of translating such a passage, which, by the way, extends to two whole pages in length.
Some of the pros are that the book is quite in-depth on issues like pronouns, sound changes, history, etc. In addition, one particular aspect I like is that it is full of vocabulary. The vocabulary is so expansive, it might even be too much, but that is a direction that is better to err in anyways. The vocabulary is listed in categories like "nature, living things, household, body parts" etc. Another cool thing about the vocabulary is that it contains derivations: that is to say, it will introduce a word, and then introduce related words, so that you learn not only one word, but an entire word family.
All in all, my final opinion is this: this book is very beneficial to somebody who is already familiar with old english, and is wishing to further their studies by gaining a more extensive vocabulary and by practising on rather complex exercises. I would not recommend this to a beginner, despite the book's claims.
The book attempts to gradually introduce grammar, yet I find its attempt rather poor. This is mainly due to its poor organization. Chapter four introduces the verb, and from this chapter I quote: "The verbal system of OE is complicated, and ten chapters of this book will be required for its full discussion." In the mean-time, it simply gives a few conjugation tables for common verbs. Hereafter, verbs are not mentioned again until chapter eight; in between these chapters are the declensions of nouns, which is something that should have been taught from the very beginning. Then, we learn about i-mutation in chapter twelve, which is a criminal offense to me. I-mutation should either be taught before or during the discussion of verbs. Otherwise, the student is going to be confused and wondering why the verbs so often change vowels in the present stem.
The exercises are very advanced. Right off the bat, before we are given an explanation as to how to conjugate a verb, and having only been given a minimal introduction to the declension of weak nouns, we are given an exercise: a translation exercise of the parable of the prodigal son. This is far too advanced. I have no idea how a beginning student could possibly be capable of translating such a passage, which, by the way, extends to two whole pages in length.
Some of the pros are that the book is quite in-depth on issues like pronouns, sound changes, history, etc. In addition, one particular aspect I like is that it is full of vocabulary. The vocabulary is so expansive, it might even be too much, but that is a direction that is better to err in anyways. The vocabulary is listed in categories like "nature, living things, household, body parts" etc. Another cool thing about the vocabulary is that it contains derivations: that is to say, it will introduce a word, and then introduce related words, so that you learn not only one word, but an entire word family.
All in all, my final opinion is this: this book is very beneficial to somebody who is already familiar with old english, and is wishing to further their studies by gaining a more extensive vocabulary and by practising on rather complex exercises. I would not recommend this to a beginner, despite the book's claims.
April 17, 2025
This self-teaching book of Old English was written for a generation of Englishmen that had Latin at school taught through rote memorization of noun and verb paradigms. In little more than 100 pages, the author covers all the inflection of Old English, with each chapter dedicated to a particular subset of it and then a few reading passages are provided. The phonology of Old English is very much an afterthought, something that the reader is not expected to be very concerned with.
I have spent a lot of time reading Old Norse, and I am trying to move over to the extremely similar Old English with a minimum of starting over from scratch, so what I wanted here were just the reading passages (a entertaining mix of Christian and historical themes) and the book was decent enough for me. But I think that any typical learner starting on Old English today would either either be completely daunted by the teaching approach used here, or find it as appealing as being asked to eat a bowl full of sand with a spoon.
I must say, the original 1964 hardback edition of this is one of the finest books I have ever seen: impressive stamped cover, creamy paper, quality sewn binding, and exquisite typesetting. They really don’t make them like this any more.
I have spent a lot of time reading Old Norse, and I am trying to move over to the extremely similar Old English with a minimum of starting over from scratch, so what I wanted here were just the reading passages (a entertaining mix of Christian and historical themes) and the book was decent enough for me. But I think that any typical learner starting on Old English today would either either be completely daunted by the teaching approach used here, or find it as appealing as being asked to eat a bowl full of sand with a spoon.
I must say, the original 1964 hardback edition of this is one of the finest books I have ever seen: impressive stamped cover, creamy paper, quality sewn binding, and exquisite typesetting. They really don’t make them like this any more.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews