Anglo-Saxon Grammar Revision

[highlyeccentric]

Eeep, I have turned into a waitressing zombie and utterly failed to do any Anglo-Saxon for the last month and a bit. Clearly, I *need* some people to band together and prod me into studying, and the Goblin has failed utterly in this role.

pathawi, putalis2, goblinpaladin, anyone else? The plan, such as it is, is to work through Peter Baker's Online Introduction to Anglo-Saxon. It has a grammar book, selected texts and grammar exercises. It's designed for raw beginners, but I for one know it's high time i actually learnt some verb conjugations.


To begin with, a list of online resources:

http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/
- download the Junicode font package, if you don't already have it, since for some reason most Anglo-Saxon stuff on the net uses it (including my blog, i might point out).
Also, observe the Electronic Introduction to Old English, the Anthology, and Old English AErobics.

http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html
- Bosworth & Toller's Anglo-Saxon dictionary, a bit old and not the most student-friendly, but definitely the most comprehensive AS dictionary currently available, is now available as a searchable java applet. The Germanic Lexicon Project kick arse.

http://acunix.wheatonma.edu/mdrout/GrammarBook2007/
Michael Drout also has a grammar book up, which has simpler explanations (although an aggravating tendancy not to talk about nouns in terms of gender), grammar and vocab exercises, sound bites, and blank paradigm tables.
While we're at it, Drout's Anglo-Saxon Aloud is awesome. One day the Goblin and I will convince Alex Jones to let us record him and upload it, and that will be MORE awesome, but for now, Drout is The Man.

http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/courses/handouts/magic.html
this is Baker's MAGIC SHEET with all the important OE inflections on it. Never leave home without it.



So. How do you guys want to go about this? Do you want to do just grammar, or grammar and translation, or what?

Comments

[goblinpaladin.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've tried to poke you towards study! Don't blame me for this!

[pathawi.livejournal.com]

Well, the Putali & I have been working for a while on a reading of Blickling Homily 1, so the translation isn't as direct a need for us, but it's hard for me to imagine how we'd go about learning the grammar without doing a modicum of translation, or perhaps translation & back-translation. I don't really care much for the exercises in the interactive Old English Aerobics, but Drout's book doesn't mark for vowel length, which I think is a significant failing. The new Old English Aerobics workbook looks better, but it's only done for lessons 4-8. What do you guys think? What've you been planning, so far?

[pathawi.livejournal.com]

Eck. Adjusted reading comprehension glasses: Yes! Working thru Baker sounds like the best option available. It looks like we're likely to learn more thru the new workbook, tho, than the old ærobics, for the chapters where the new workbook's available.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Do you want to work through the new workbook and compare answers for correction purposes, then?

putalis just said he'll be reviewing chapter three of the e-intro this week. the goblin has gone offline due to house movings- besides, Awesome is apparently going to teach him and MrsBacon personally in febuary- so what do you say i cover chapter 4 and we do the workbook for chapter four by earlyish next week?

[pathawi.livejournal.com]

Sounds good. I've just finished the first exercise, & I hope to finish the second this evening. I don't have Internet access at home, so I'll probably post my responses in the morning. American Imperial Time.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Cool. I just put up my summary of chapter four, in the entry entitled 'an obituary to noun declensions', and i'll stick up my exercises in the comments section this evening :)