What do you think?
Rate this book
Reading Old English: A Primer and First Reader
A Groundbreaking Work
Traditionally, Old English grammars have merely presented grammatical information and teachers have been left to organize it and communicate it to students. Reading Old English, however, attempts to do quite a bit of the teaching, often warning students that one detail is particularly important to learn, or that they should not be discouraged upon encountering yet another seemingly illogical construction. The explanations are clear, and the exercises are well conceived and admirably plentiful. Furthermore, authors Robert Hasenfratz and Thomas Jambeck have been diligent in avoiding "dumbing-down" the material: students are expected to deal with most of the complexities demanded of them by more traditional grammars.
Traditionally, Old English grammars have merely presented grammatical information and teachers have been left to organize it and communicate it to students. Reading Old English, however, attempts to do quite a bit of the teaching, often warning students that one detail is particularly important to learn, or that they should not be discouraged upon encountering yet another seemingly illogical construction. The explanations are clear, and the exercises are well conceived and admirably plentiful. Furthermore, authors Robert Hasenfratz and Thomas Jambeck have been diligent in avoiding "dumbing-down" the material: students are expected to deal with most of the complexities demanded of them by more traditional grammars.
554 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
4 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 11, 2020
Very interesting and well-structured introduction to Old English! Also good that there is information on culture and literature and not just on the linguistics. Pretty approachable, even if you don't know a lot about linguistics! Only annoying thing were the typos which were quite frequent...
July 21, 2019
I believe I was in the first class to use this book, it was Fall Semester of 2005 with Hasenfratz.
We also used Mitchell and Robinson's Guide to Old English, the longtime standard, which I had tried using on my own a year or two earlier without much success.
I found the newer book very effective, as it incorporated practice and reading better than Mitchell and Robinson. (It didn't hurt to be in class, but it was graduate school and most of the work was done independently with the books.)
However, it is worth repeating as advice for the learner, that even the author of this book did not use it as the sole text when teaching.
But it did make a very good introduction.
We also used Mitchell and Robinson's Guide to Old English, the longtime standard, which I had tried using on my own a year or two earlier without much success.
I found the newer book very effective, as it incorporated practice and reading better than Mitchell and Robinson. (It didn't hurt to be in class, but it was graduate school and most of the work was done independently with the books.)
However, it is worth repeating as advice for the learner, that even the author of this book did not use it as the sole text when teaching.
But it did make a very good introduction.
November 7, 2023
Would have been completely lost throughout my old English course, for obvious reasons
February 2, 2013
Would've given it the extra star, however, it contains quite a lot of typos and errors. My professor abhors this textbook though.
July 4, 2016
Pretty good - some grammatical things wrong in the modern English parts, and some parts a little confusing in their explinations, but other than that really good.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews