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Practical Old English
Tips for learning Old English
This page is designed to be a help to those who are embarking on the study of the Anglo-Saxon language. Thanks to computers and people who love the language and its literature, there is a lot of OE stuff on the web, and there is also a host of real-world stuff (which is not always easy to find). This webpage is designed to help you make use of it all. Here are some steps that might be found helpful.
1.Go to the nearest used book store and buy ANYTHING on Old English they have. You will be lucky to find anything, as these books are not exactly bestsellers. Failing that, go to your friendly neighborhood university library and make a copy of something slim there. Or ask if you can become a community borrower, but this is usually not cheap. Start working through whatever you can get.
2. It will probably seem quite technical to you. Why? Many books for learning Old English are written from a historical linguist's point of view, with words catergorized according to their Indo-European roots. A beginner would do better to start with a vocabulary-based lesson, like Cathy Ball's on-line Hwaet! Old English in Context: www.georgetown.edu/cball/hwaet/hwaet06.html After all, most of us do not approach a new language wondering about its irregularities and relationships to other languages; rather we have much more immediate concerns, like acquiring vocabulary.
3. As you are working through Hwaet!, try to make some headway in that technical goodie you got earlier. As you progress, it will become a good reference work. There are quite a few out there. A long-time standard has been Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer, but even he has his critics, among whom was C. S. Lewis. No matter. Keep plowing through the linguist's descriptive grammar stuff while you are working on something more suited to the post-modern mindset. Another good web-based OE learning program is the University of Calgary's, though you may find the readings a bit over your head at first. It has excellent sound files. The address is: http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/site.htm
There are others, too. Www.google.com is your friend. Go there, punch in "learning Old English," (without quotes) or something similar, then shop around. When looking for OE learning materials, look for something which has excercises and a key to the exercises, so you will actually be working with the language and checking yourself. Probably the most approachable and user-friendly book on the market is Stephen Pollington's 'First Steps in Old English.'
4. Start reading ABOUT Anglo-Saxon culture and OE literature. The website Regia Anglorum (www.regia.org) will help here. Go to their page on the web and click on "complete listing" for just about anything you would care to read about. Your univers-ity library will have some good books about OE literature.
5. Start reading OE texts. You can do it, really. A good place to start is the Bible, especially if you have spent much time in church. This is because you will be already generally familiar with what you are going to read. If you can't find a New Testament text on-line (google), get thee to thy university library. Start with John if you can. Another fairly approachable text is "Appollonius of Tyre." Another is the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," though you may find some of the entries, especially the later years, quite difficult. University types out there may object to that for a starter, but it is really not that difficult--its advantage being that it comes in small chunks.
When reading, a good rule of thumb is ten (+/-)new words per sitting. That may not seem like much, but multiply it by the sittings you will do per week then figure that over a year.
A good reading procedure is to first go to a text that seems to be doable for you. You will develop a sense for this in time. 2)Read the text and underline new words until you get to ten. 3) Take a short break to give the brain time to digest what it has just done, then go back and look those words up in the dictionary you have bought or copied from the internet. Any-thing you can't find in your dictionary can be checked against a Modern English (ME) translation. You may want to write your own ME translation first, then compare and see how you did. 4) Finally, once you have written your ME definitions near your new words, go back and read the text and review as many times as you feel necessary. 5) Have several texts going at once to keep your interest at a high level.
6. If you have gobs of free time for extra reading, you might want to start OE from the back door. Read Milton 'Paradise Lost' and keep working backwards to Spenser 'The Faerie Queen,' Mallory 'Le Morte D'Arthur,' and finally to Chaucer. Read these in UNCORRECTED ORIGINAL ENGLISH versions. (You may have to give yourself an introduction to Middle English for these texts! But This is much easier than learning Old English and can be tackled in a few evenings [I stress introduction here!]).
7. Start reading manuscript copies. For this you will have to go to your university library and be prepared to do some work. Go to their computer card catalog and type in the words of what you happen to be reading and look for microfiche or microfilm copies of the manuscripts (abbreviated ms./MS. for singular, mss./MSS. for plural). Go to the film/fiche reader/copier and make xerox copies for reading at home. Even copies of these ancient beauties will provide challenge and beauty to your study of OE. They really take you back in time as you imagine the scribe bent over the vellum with his feather dip pen: write three letters. Dip. Write three letters. Dip. Write three letters or so. Dip. Sharpen feather (with penknife, of course, where the word comes from). Dip. Ad infinitum.
The lettering on the mss. will really be a challenge. OE hand, called 'insular' is very fond of the character with the long descender: to the untrained eye, f,r,s,w, and theta/eth (OE letters for the 'th' sound) look very confusing and take some time to straighten out. Get yourself a broad-nibbed fountain pen and a bottle of black ink at your local stationery shop and try to reproduce the letters yourself. This will help you distinguish them. Or just use any ballpoint.
8. Go to your local community college and take a beginning (modern) German class. You will find this really compliments your knowledge of OE. Further, if you study OE over a lifetime, you will start running into more and more supplementary works in German. Did you notice your technical OE grammar book refers to German from time to time? See what I mean? Studies show that language learners benefit from studying more that one language at a time. One might think that this would confuse the brain and detract from the target language one is studying. Both true. But it also builds up the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition. Hence, the benefit. Another language you might want to investigate is Old Norse. Beautiful sagas and lots of stuff on the web are among its advantages. A great book for expanding the language acquisition part of your brain is 'Old English and Its Closest Relatives,' by Orrin Robinson. Larger bookstores may even have a copy on hand. You'll be reading Old Norse, Gothic, Old Frisian, etc. in no time.
9. Listen on-line. You can also buy Beowulf in Old English, with other selections, read by J. D. Schlessingger (order thru local bookstore). There is also a tape to go with Stephen Pollington's Book. Again, the ten-word-or-so rule applies. You should generally know what a text is about on the first listening for a listening exercise to be of value. Listen with and without having the text in front of you. Repeat orally the words you hear. A word spoken is much more likely to be remembered than one heard or read.
10. Write in Old English. This is one more way to work with any language you are learning. The four skills in any language are listening, speaking, reading and writing. They are complimentary, even if you are studying a dead language. There are a couple of ways to write in OE. One is to read a ME text which exists in OE and translate it back and see how you did. Do this with short lines of poetry or individual sentences at first, as diction and idiom are likely to vary--though you will learn from the process.
Another way to write in Old English is on-line user group. There is one at: ENGLISC@morgan.ucs.mun.ca It is specifically designed for those who want to write in OE as well as read others' writing. There is also the New Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which accepts submissions of a historical nature. For a real blast visit their website and catch up on the news in OE!
www.buckrogers.demon.co.uk/nasc.htm
11. Some other great links are as follows (Sorry, these may not all connect automatically if clicked on below.).
Oxford English Dictionary. Www.oed.com. Go there for their word of the day--sometimes the listings date back to the Anglo-Saxon period and are great to read just for the history of English development.
Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader and glossary (below). This book with its many great texts is now on-line, thanks to some University of Pennsylvania folks. The grammar part is purely descriptive, rather than hands-on. The glossary's advantage is that it shows different forms of each word, not just the root, with text references for each form--a great book to have on hand.
Clark Hall's Concise Old English Dictionary can be ordered through a bookstore, or a previous edition is on line at:www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oe_bosworthtoller.html
Bodelain Library. Manuscript copies can be viewed and they are always trying to improve and add to the collection. Go to http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ and click on "digital library projects" and have fun looking around.
Bosworth and Toller's an Anglo Saxon Dictionary: www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oe_bosworthtoller.html At over 2000 pages, what else could you want?
12. A word about learning languages in general. Don't feel you must study a certain way (including mine) or that you must understand everything at once. Levels of understanding a language and interacting with it go this way. 1)Gist. This means you understand generally what an item of a foreign language is about, though not every word. 2)Fuller understanding. You understand and can react to the text completely on an information level. 3)Analysis. You can comment and evaluate on a language item on the levels of: a)information b) vocabulary c)syntax d)grammar e)logic. At any one time in interaction with any piece of language, foreign or otherwise, the brain may be operating on several levels at once. However, for the foreign language learner, it is NOT necessary or advisable to try to reach all levels for all language items encountered at first, and doing so can lead one to a feeling of not making much progress. But progressing in small reading steps and working on grammar separately you will slowly begin to work on more and more of the levels. It can be a great pleasure at times just to see how far you can go in an OE text reading for gist! If you don't immediately understand a text that you think is within your reach, it is advisable to read ahead INSTEAD of reaching for the dictionary.
13. The best way to learn something is to teach it and make it accessible. Finding people to talk about OE with is important, even if they don't study it themselves. Joining an on-line users' group could help here. Or design your own webpage. Write the still unwritten really practical and interesting book on the Old English language.
14. Wes thu hal. (Good luck.)
Bosworth and Toller an Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
Old English at the University of Calgary
Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader
The Gospel of Mark in Old English
Clark Hall's Concise OE Dictionary
Send E-Mail to: rhodes_r@poczta.onet.pl
Copyright © 2004 Rich Rhodes. All Rights Reserved