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Complete Old English: Teach Yourself
The best-selling complete course for a fun and effective way to learn Old English. This ISBN is for the paperback book. The corresponding audio support (ISBN: 9781444104202) is also available. The book and audio support can also be purchased as a pack (ISBN: 9781444104196).
369 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 21, 2014
If you’re not headed into a deep, technical class on Old English, this is the best book on learning Old English that I’ve seen.
Atherton has done ordinary folks a huge service with his work on this. In addition to presenting the language from the very beginning, in itself rare, he also gives a lot of cultural context. This context is critical, since you can’t visit Old England the way a student of Spanish or Danish can visit Spain or Denmark. He really takes a gentle approach to the inflection of Old English, which should aid learners who don’t know an inflected language. Of course, for those of us who do, it’s nice to have the various uses of the cases spun out one by one.
The texts selected for the book are of a wide variety and should hold your interest. If you don’t like the Joseph story from the Bible, there are snips from the anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And if you don’t like either of those, there are riddles and snips of poetry.
Another nice touch is the audio that comes with. It really makes the language come alive. As for how accurate the recordings are to how the language was spoken, I cannot say—but they breathe life into it and that’s enough for me. In any case, spend the extra for the audio.
Is the book perfect? No, but it’s so much better than everything else (not meant for graduate level classes) that there’s no reason to get anything else for a first look at Old English.
Atherton has done ordinary folks a huge service with his work on this. In addition to presenting the language from the very beginning, in itself rare, he also gives a lot of cultural context. This context is critical, since you can’t visit Old England the way a student of Spanish or Danish can visit Spain or Denmark. He really takes a gentle approach to the inflection of Old English, which should aid learners who don’t know an inflected language. Of course, for those of us who do, it’s nice to have the various uses of the cases spun out one by one.
The texts selected for the book are of a wide variety and should hold your interest. If you don’t like the Joseph story from the Bible, there are snips from the anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And if you don’t like either of those, there are riddles and snips of poetry.
Another nice touch is the audio that comes with. It really makes the language come alive. As for how accurate the recordings are to how the language was spoken, I cannot say—but they breathe life into it and that’s enough for me. In any case, spend the extra for the audio.
Is the book perfect? No, but it’s so much better than everything else (not meant for graduate level classes) that there’s no reason to get anything else for a first look at Old English.
May 20, 2017
Surprisingly good. While obviously still a quick and shallow guide, it really doesn't suffer as much from being in the Teach Yourself series as the cover makes it look, though the associated audio resources are inevitably nowhere to be found.
This book convincingly places English in the Germanic family tree in a way that it wasn't for me before, and already knowing another Germanic language will make working through it much easier. The more conservative that language is the better; Atherton uses German a lot to draw comparisons, but I found Dutch to be dramatically more helpful, both in terms of available phonemes and vocabulary (though German better preserves some aspects of grammar). Frisian would presumably be best.
This book convincingly places English in the Germanic family tree in a way that it wasn't for me before, and already knowing another Germanic language will make working through it much easier. The more conservative that language is the better; Atherton uses German a lot to draw comparisons, but I found Dutch to be dramatically more helpful, both in terms of available phonemes and vocabulary (though German better preserves some aspects of grammar). Frisian would presumably be best.
August 12, 2022
Good for an introduction, but as one goes further it can get a little boring with all the prose texts (charters, royal decrees, episcopal letters and all), especially if one needs to prepare slides for presentations (to teach the language, for Heaven's sake). But then again, there may be many history majors among the targeted readers. Also regretably, the long vowels are not marked, which can make the reading rather difficult, though the omission of macrons seems to be purposeful. Some typos can get really annoying, too. I had to check other versions of some texts to correct them. I wish that it could contain more poetry: but that could outreach the purpose of an introductory textbook.
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February 8, 2009So I'm not fluent in Old English. But I CAN say "Cnut cyning gret his arcebiscopas"...which is obviously useful as a pick-up line.
May 26, 2012
Of all the Teach Yourself series, this one may be the best.
April 9, 2015
this is my tutor's book or else i probably would've given it 2 stars
March 17, 2023
About 90% of the Old English readings were unintelligible to me, so the audio translations were helpful. I wonder how many years it will take for today’s English to be equally unintelligible by future speakers of an ever-evolving English? I wonder if the rate of change in languages has increased since globalization (I would think so) and if it will continue to change at a faster pace than before.
December 13, 2020
An excellent introduction to a complicated subject. It's the oddest thing, but in the simpler, and earlier extracts provided in the book, I could actually read the Old English without looking up the words. But towards the end, especially the metred poetry of Beowulf, it's almost indecipherable. Anyhow, a sterling book. I should have liked the audio being made available better. Using the sound files on the TY website was harder than it should have been, especially scrolling down a list of files without descriptions and references to the sections in the book - a star down for that.
June 4, 2019
As a fanatic and passionate historian on this subject I find this book a must read,although in my case it will never be completed as I am using it as a reference guide and will keep on returning to it.
July 17, 2018
Excellent intro to the topic. Would recommend if you need to pick up Anglo-Saxon for some reason.
November 15, 2018
Love it.
May 21, 2019
No online audio
The book is brilliant. Unfortunately there is no access to online audio files. Well I couldn't find them. Else I would have given a 5
The book is brilliant. Unfortunately there is no access to online audio files. Well I couldn't find them. Else I would have given a 5
October 24, 2019
This is one of the best grammar books I have read. Not because it did a great job of explaining the grammar of Old English. On that point it was probably only good enough. What made this a great books was the incredible wealth of information it presented about Anglo-Saxon England.
The language was taught through readings of extant Anglo Saxon texts, and each text was introduced in its context. Readings were carefully chosen by an author clearly very familiar with the Anglo Saxon corpus. That alone made the book interesting reading.
Add to that the sections in each chapter on cultural contexts, which contained a mix of history and cultural information that greatly enriched this book. And then there were the word hoard sections which are an amateur etymologists delight! Find out in this book about where we get phrases like "willy nilly", or why the less sophisticated characters in Shakespeare might say "chill" for "I wish/I will", or what all those place names in England actually mean, or why adverbs so often end in "-ly" or all kinds of other such things.
This is actually my second reading of this book. I first read it 6 years ago, and there was plenty more to learn this time around.
In terms of learning Old English, the book does not set out the information in the way of many grammar books. There are tables of inflections and declensions, but it is not overly structured. This may be because the author understands that almost no-one learns Old English to speak the language. Most people learn the language to read it, so he gives enough information to make sense of the readings, without drilling the forms in the way that would be required if someone were to learn to speak correct Old English. I think that decision is probably right, as it makes the book much more readable and probably more useful.
The language was taught through readings of extant Anglo Saxon texts, and each text was introduced in its context. Readings were carefully chosen by an author clearly very familiar with the Anglo Saxon corpus. That alone made the book interesting reading.
Add to that the sections in each chapter on cultural contexts, which contained a mix of history and cultural information that greatly enriched this book. And then there were the word hoard sections which are an amateur etymologists delight! Find out in this book about where we get phrases like "willy nilly", or why the less sophisticated characters in Shakespeare might say "chill" for "I wish/I will", or what all those place names in England actually mean, or why adverbs so often end in "-ly" or all kinds of other such things.
This is actually my second reading of this book. I first read it 6 years ago, and there was plenty more to learn this time around.
In terms of learning Old English, the book does not set out the information in the way of many grammar books. There are tables of inflections and declensions, but it is not overly structured. This may be because the author understands that almost no-one learns Old English to speak the language. Most people learn the language to read it, so he gives enough information to make sense of the readings, without drilling the forms in the way that would be required if someone were to learn to speak correct Old English. I think that decision is probably right, as it makes the book much more readable and probably more useful.
May 17, 2007
If you intend to do some serious reading of Anglo-Saxon literature, this is very helpful. It also provides nice insights into modern English and its historical development. This is definitely not for impressing your friends, unless you can somehow work the first paragraph of Beowulf into the conversation.
July 22, 2016
Well laid out - only gripe is it feels very different from the usual teaching yourself books as it is all based on reading and understanding texts from the time and it would have been nice to have some idea of general conversation (although of course I don't expect to meet an Anglo Saxon tomorrow!). Useful to understand where English has come from.
May 6, 2016
I finally got around to finishing my reading of this book - I wouldn't say I "know" Old English now, but I certainly understand it better than I did before. This is an excellent introduction, if greatly simplified.
August 4, 2019
Really useful book, although the audio is a little drab. Overall pretty helpful and fun. No "plowing through."
August 2, 2011
used to referesh grammar and reading skills. Big emphasis on prose and reading land grants!! good for beginners or as a refresher.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews