Sweets Anglo-Saxon Primer

by Henry Sweet, Norman Davis (Reviser)

Sweet's Primer first appeared in 1882 and was revised for the eighth edition in 1905. The ninth edition, revised by Norman Davis, was intended to give readers a beginner's book before plunging into Sweet's Reader. The Primer is divided between grammar and texts, the latter taken from the Bible, history (including Bede) and even medicinal recipes.

Genres: Language, Reference, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Anglo Saxon, Medieval, Literature

129 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.

As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Old English and Old Norse. In addition, Sweet published works on larger issues of phonetics and grammar in language and the teaching of languages. Many of his ideas have remained influential, and a number of his works continue to be in print, being used as course texts at colleges and universities.

Henry Sweet was born in St. Pancras in London. He was educated at Bruce Castle School and King's College School, London. In 1864, he spent a short time studying at the University of Heidelberg. Upon his return to England, he took up an office job with a trading company in London. Five years later, aged twenty-four, he won a scholarship in German and entered Balliol College in Oxford.

Sweet neglected his formal academic coursework, concentrating instead on pursuing excellence in his private studies. Early recognition came in his first year at Oxford, when the prestigious Philological Society (whose President he was destined to become later on) published a paper of his on Old English. In 1871, still an undergraduate, he edited King Alfred's translation of the Cura Pastoralis for the Early English Text Society (King Alfred's West-Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care: With an English Translation, the Latin Text, Notes, and an Introduction), his commentary establishing the foundation for Old English dialectology. He graduated, nearly thirty years old, with a fourth-class degree in literae humaniores. Subsequent works on Old English included An Anglo-Saxon Reader (1876), The Oldest English Texts (1885) and A Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon (1896).

Sweet, like his contemporary Walter Skeat, felt under particular pressure from German scholars in English studies who, often state-employed, tenured, and accompanied by their comitatus of eager graduate students "annexed" the historical study of English. Dismayed by the "swarms of young program-mongers turned out out every year by German universities," he felt that "no English dilettante can hope to compete with them—except by Germanizing himself and losing all his nationality."

In 1877, Sweet published A Handbook of Phonetics, which attracted international attention among scholars and teachers of English in Europe. He followed up with the Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Englisch (1885), which was subsequently adapted as A Primer of Spoken English (1890). This included the first scientific description of educated London speech, later known as received pronunciation, with specimens of connected speech represented in phonetic script. His emphasis on spoken language and phonetics made him a pioneer in language teaching, a subject which he covered in detail in The Practical Study of Languages (1899). In 1901, Sweet was made reader in phonetics at Oxford. The Sounds of English (1908) was his last book on English pronunciation.

Other books by Sweet include An Icelandic Primer with Grammar, Notes and Glossary (1886), The History of Language (1900, and a number of other works he edited for the Early English Text Society. Sweet was also closely involved in the early history of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Despite the recognition he received for his scholarly work, Sweet never received a university professorship, a fact that disturbed him greatly; he had done poorly as a student at Oxford, he had annoyed many people through bluntness, and he failed to make every effort to gather official support. His relationship with the Oxford University Press was often strained.

Sweet died on 30 April 1912 in Oxford, of pernicious anaemia; he left no children.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Sweet was a philologist who specialized in the Germanic languages, particularly Old English and Old Norse. His Anglo Saxon Primer and Anglo Saxon Reader are probably the best known collections of Anglo Saxon texts in modern printed books. This primer was first published in 1882 and remains just as important today, because the texts are hardly going to get any more dated than they already are!

I have had this on my shelf for many years and dipped into it occasionally but this is the first time I have read it all the way through. There are chosen readings from Anglo Saxon literature, starting with short works and familiar texts from the gospel of Matthew. These then move onto Old Testament texts that stray from direct translations of the original and turn into sermons. After this we get texts from Bede, and that was when I hit this very interesting text:

Breten īeġ-land is eahta hund mīla lang, and twā hund
mīla brād; and hēr sind on þǣm īeġlande fīf ġe·þēodu:
Ęnġlisc, Brettisc, Scyttisc, Pihtisc, and Bōc-læden

That is:

"The island of Britain is 800 miles long and 200 miles across; and there are five languages spoken on this island; English, British (i.e Welsh/Cumbric/Cornish), Scottish, Pictish and Book Latin."

The whole of that passage was a real treat as Bede proceeded to recount a brief history of the British peoples, including the arrival of Hengst and Horsa described here:

And on hiera dagum, Hęnġest and Horsa, fram Wyrtġeorne
ġe·laþode, Bretta cyninge, ġe·sōhton Bretene on þǣm
stęde þe is ġe·nęmned Ypwines-flēot, ǣrest Brettum tō fultume,
ac hīe eft on hīe fuhton.

"And in their days (i.e "in the time of"), Hengest and Horsa, invited by Wyrtġeorne (Vortigern), king of the Britons to assist him, landed in a place called Ypwines-flēot (Ipwinesfleet, Thanet, Kent). First of all they were to support the Britons but they afterwards fought against them."

This then is some of the source material for the King Arthur legends, and a very important text in understanding English and British history (even if it does have some fanciful notions about where the Britons came from originally).

[Dave/Maggie Bean · Rating 4 out of 5]

At eighteen, I hated this one with a passion. At forty-three, I wish I'd kept it.

[Dawn Hammill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember this primer being so packed with invaluable information that it was a little painful to work through at times, but being able to understand some of the most amazing poetry in the English language definitely makes up for every hair-pulling moment of frustration!

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a great tutorial, but a handy brief reference.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Translated about 50 lines from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[Ethan Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic, with some great translation exercises, but you do need to pair it with a more substantial textbook like Mitchell & Robinson's Guide to Old English, to explain the grammar more thoroughly.

[Drianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the 3rd edition (not revised) of 1886.

I had skimmed this book before but never actually sat down and read through the texts. (I still didn't read the grammar in order, sorry.)

The initial section of readings is a set of constructed sentences that do not relate to each other with the aim of illustrating forms, mainly, and that would be totally fine, except that the sentences do not *look* unconnected - they are arranged into what look like paragraphs. But! The "paragraphs" are not all on one topic, and the topic swings wildly with no textual indication. But sometimes they are connected! It makes it very hard to read (and is why this section was removed in the later revisions of the book).

The other readings I enjoyed and learned things from that I did not know, to wit:
--the Old English word for "camel" is "olfend" -- from the Latin 'elephas' because why not, those are the same animal
--the apocrypha contain not just entire non-Protestant-canonical books, like I knew, but director's cuts of two books with extra chapters, namely of Esther and (relevantly here) Daniel. So Ælfic uses the story of Daniel in the lion's "pit", fair, but concentrates on this weird derail about how Habakkuk delivers him some food while he's there instead of, y'know, the famous point of the story and also the reason for Daniel being in the pit is different and btw he killed a dragon too
--medieval hermeneutics are so strange and everything is allegories, which I knew, but had never actually read so much of before
--my favorite things are OE words that have modern German cognates but no modern English descendants, e.g. earm 'poor, wretched' cognate with Gm. arm
--I was really enjoying the life of St Edmund the Martyr-king and having such a great hagiographical time until, whoops, Ælfric slipped at the end and committed a whole bunch of antisemitism :(

Anyway, if you have the patience to spend a ton of time looking words up in a glossary (that might or might not have help finding the original of the inflected version that's in the reading), this is a good place to start. If you don't want that, uh, well, there's The Cambridge Old English Reader, that does at least have a lot of same-page glosses. But you probably weren't interested in OE without already knowing at least one other dead language, right? And you probably learned it via grammar-translation and are happy to do so again? Because otherwise, man, you're out of luck.

[Jari Havela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tasty, as in little tidbits.

[Blunt Of Mercia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to Old English. Good variety of interesting text, decent glossaries, etc. etc.