What do you think?
Rate this book
Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
212 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 23, 2011
21 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
C. Alphonso Smith
83 booksCharles Alphonso Smith, better known as C. Alphonso Smith, was an American Professor of English, college dean, philologist, and folklorist.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 4, 2014
This was the first book that I had used when I began my studies of Old English, and I would recommend it to any beginner. One particularly beneficial aspect is that the book is quite dated, and therefore is able to be read and downloaded from book services like Google Books. I would recommend to anybody, after they finish reading this review, to search for this book in Google Books and do a thorough previewing of the book to back up my claims. Then I wuld highly recommend the book be bought in physical copy, though, if one has a tablet, reading on Google Books is a fine alternative.
What I enjoy about this book's methodology is its gradual approach to grammar. Each of the earlier chapters introduce a noun declension, a new grammatical concept (usually an article, verb, or pronoun) followed by a list of vocabulary and a series of translation exercises from Old English to Modern English and vice versa. The book has very brief but satisfactory explanations on i-mutation, verb contractions, various sound changes, etc that make such advanced concepts easy to grasp for a beginner. The later chapters, with the simple grammar having been explained, are no-nonsense explanations on syntax. There is a drastic difficulty curve, with the translations becoming harder to complete and the chapters growing longer in length. But this is a good aspect, and makes the student challenge themselves.
The book then contains various reading exercises. Though the grammar will be understood by the student who has diligently worked hard throughout the exercises, I will say that the vocabulary is simply too complex. Many words were not taught in the lessons, and this results in the student heavily switching back and forth between the glossary and the readings. About the glossary: it is very large and thorough. One complaint I have is that though it gives the words and their translations, it doesn't say much about the properties of the words. It would be helpful if the nouns would say what gender they are, or if the verbs would say to which class they belong.
One severe drawback is that the book does not contain an answer key. This makes learning rather difficult. The student will not have any way to check their answers.
But all in all, this is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anybody as their first old english book.
What I enjoy about this book's methodology is its gradual approach to grammar. Each of the earlier chapters introduce a noun declension, a new grammatical concept (usually an article, verb, or pronoun) followed by a list of vocabulary and a series of translation exercises from Old English to Modern English and vice versa. The book has very brief but satisfactory explanations on i-mutation, verb contractions, various sound changes, etc that make such advanced concepts easy to grasp for a beginner. The later chapters, with the simple grammar having been explained, are no-nonsense explanations on syntax. There is a drastic difficulty curve, with the translations becoming harder to complete and the chapters growing longer in length. But this is a good aspect, and makes the student challenge themselves.
The book then contains various reading exercises. Though the grammar will be understood by the student who has diligently worked hard throughout the exercises, I will say that the vocabulary is simply too complex. Many words were not taught in the lessons, and this results in the student heavily switching back and forth between the glossary and the readings. About the glossary: it is very large and thorough. One complaint I have is that though it gives the words and their translations, it doesn't say much about the properties of the words. It would be helpful if the nouns would say what gender they are, or if the verbs would say to which class they belong.
One severe drawback is that the book does not contain an answer key. This makes learning rather difficult. The student will not have any way to check their answers.
But all in all, this is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anybody as their first old english book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review