A Gentle Introduction to Old English

by Murray McGillivray

Overview

This book is designed to ease the beginner into competent reading of Old English texts. It presents the essential points of Old English grammar and also includes a selection of short, relatively simple original language texts, glossed and annotated. Numerous practice exercises are also included throughout. A companion website includes additional interactive exercises, a fuller grammar, and further original language texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551118413
Publisher:	Broadview Press
Publication date:	12/20/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Murray McGillivray is Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction

Chapter 1: Some Grammatical Terminology You Will Need
Chapter 2: Pronunciation and Spelling of Old English
Chapter 3: Strong Nouns and an Introduction to Old English Cases
Chapter 4: Demonstratives; Nominative and Genitive Cases
Chapter 5: A Few Old English Verbs; Accusative and Dative Cases
Chapter 6: Weak Verbs: Subjunctive, Participles, Infinitives
Chapter 7: Strong Nouns and Cases
Chapter 8: Strong Verbs; Personal Pronouns
Chapter 9: Weak Nouns and Noun Oddities; Numerals
Chapter 10: Adjectives
Chapter 11: Word Order in Noun Phrases and Sentences; the Subjunctive
Chapter 12: Old English Metre, Poetic Diction, and Poetic Syntax

Prose Readings

• Abraham and Isaac
  The Birth of Jesus
  The Story of Ohthere
  Aelfric’s Colloquy

Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

If the magister in Ælfric’s Colloquy shows himself more than willing to apply the rod, teachers of Old English today, one hopes, have carrots to entice modern students, as well as sticks with which to discipline them. Murray McGillivray’s Gentle Introduction to Old English brings a refreshing perspective on the traditional carrots (actual Old English readings) and sticks (paradigms to memorize) that have long characterized the teaching of Old English. McGillivray’s approach should ease modern students into the grammatical paradigms of Anglo-Saxon that have long frightened many a beginning learner of the language. And the readers who make it to the end will have also made it through the whole of Ælfric’s Colloquy, and thus, one hopes, enjoy the rewards of the reading while having endured a lesser pain from the paradigms themselves than many an earlier generation of students.” — Thomas Bredehoft, West Virginia University

“This timely and welcome textbook fields the neglected middle ground where twenty-first-century students of Old English increasingly huddle: eager, culturally savvy, but unaware of the rudiments of linguistic terminology, even if they have fluency in modern languages. This introduction is not a petting zoo of artificial, defanged texts along the lines of otherwise excellent introductions of fifty years ago, but anticipates students’ most frequently asked questions as well as organizing the syntactic and morphological fauna with which they most need to be acquainted before going on safari in the next generation of edited texts.” — Mary Blockley, University of Texas at Austin

From the Publisher

This timely and welcome textbook fields the neglected middle ground where twenty-first-century students of Old English increasingly huddle: eager, culturally savvy, but unaware of the rudiments of linguistic terminology, even if they have fluency in modern languages. This introduction is not a petting zoo of artificial, defanged texts along the lines of otherwise excellent introductions of fifty years ago, but anticipates students’ most frequently asked questions as well as organizing the syntactic and morphological fauna with which they most need to be acquainted before going on safari in the next generation of edited texts.”

Mary Blockley University of Texas at Austin

If the magister in Ælfric's Colloquy shows himself more than willing to apply the rod, teachers of Old English today, one hopes, have carrots to entice modern students, as well as sticks with which to discipline them. Murray McGillivray’s Gentle Introduction to Old English brings a refreshing perspective on the traditional carrots (actual Old English readings) and sticks (paradigms to memorize) that have long characterized the teaching of Old English. McGillivray’s approach should ease modern students into the grammatical paradigms of Anglo-Saxon that have long frightened many a beginning learner of the language. And the readers who make it to the end will have also made it through the whole of Ælfric’s Colloquy, and thus, one hopes, enjoy the rewards of the reading while having endured a lesser pain from the paradigms themselves than many an earlier generation of students.”

Thomas Bredehoft West Virginia University