Rudiments of Anglo-Saxon

Learn the language of Beowulf and King Alfred in thirty-two simple lessons!

Why use "domicile" when you could use a great word like "home"? Sure, half of English on the whole may come from Latin, but the lion's share of everyday conversation—the real meat of our language—comes from Anglo-Saxon. If you want prose with a backbone, you should be studying the rumbling tongue of Anglo-Saxon. It was the language of Alfred the Great, and it gave us the tale of Beowulf. It's the source of vivid English words like ache, inkling, limber, lynch, and marshmallow.

Simply put, Rudiments of Anglo-Saxon is a distillation of the more academic and abstracted Old English grammars. Rudiments won't bury you in verbiage or leave you feeling like you should have been a linguist. In Unit One, the beginner will learn step-by-step basics of Anglo-Saxon grammar, from new letters like thorn and eth to strong and weak adjectives and beyond. Unit Two, while guiding the student through much of Mark's Gospel and Beowulf , introduces the fundamentals of translation from getting the right dictionary to deciphering poetry. Altogether, the textbook contains enough material for thirty-two happy weeks spent ransacking the Anglo-Saxon word-hoard.

248 pages.

View excerpt here.

Features:

• Two units covering basic Anglo-Saxon grammar and syntax, and translations from most of Beowulf and Mark , with explanatory footnotes

• Thirty-two chapters, each structured by week to include five days of vocabulary, grammar, composition or translation work, and quizzes

• Weekly vocabulary lists teaching 2,000+ Anglo-Saxon words and highlighting English derivatives

• Two short glossaries (Anglo-Saxon to English, and vice versa)

• Extras including two memorization passages, two final exams, and suggestions for further reading

• An Answer Key for Rudiments of Anglo-Saxon with answers to all exercises, quizzes, translations, and unit tests. Time-saving and practical, it's a must for a teacher or student diving in to Old English on their own or in a classroom.