Customer Reviews

Old English Grammar and Reader: Grammar and Reader

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the only book for Anglo-Saxon that I know of, besides some editions of Beowulf, which has PARALLEL TEXTS for all of the readings. This is a huge help and will save you a whole lotta knock-shloggin' (looking words up), so you can study Old English kicked back with your feet up. Plus, the translations are nice and literal, and where they can't be literal, the translator gives the word-for-word meaning in parentheses.

Another nice thing is that, unlike most all other Old English readers, none of the selections here are translations of Latin works (and so not influenced by annoying Latin syntax), but all original Anglo-Saxon compositions, including some of the most important works: Caedmon's Hymn, The Battle of Brunanburg, The Battle of Maldon, The Dream of the Rood, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife's Lament, The Whale, selections from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Alfred vs. the Vikings--hooray!), and others.

Mr. Diamond says that this book "is intended to make learning Old English as easy as possible", and he does a great service by publishing it. True, there are no lessons or exercises, but if you've been studying your German or your Icelandic then you'll have no problem with the very to-the-point treatments of grammar, Umlaut, metrics, etc. (If, on the other hand, you haven't been working on your modern German, then what the heck are you already jumping to Old English for?!)

This book, good also for review, will get you reading Anglo-Saxon texts very soon if not immediately, and the mix in them of a hardy Germanic character and a very familiar Englishness is pure pleasure.

(P.S. If you want a really helpful edition of Beowulf, get George Jack's (OUP), and if you want a nice overview of all Old Germanic, try Robinson's Old English and its Closest Relatives.)

This text, in conjunction with Robinson's 'Old English and its Closest Relatives' (which you may want to read first if you're a monolingual English speaker)brings the world of early Germanic language and culture into a sharper focus. I feel that Old English is an essential study for anyone interested in Germanic languages. It serves as a solid base by which languages like Gothic and Old Norse are more easily and quickly understood.

This is the first Old English grammar I studied, nearly 25 years ago, and it remains perhaps the best one-volume introduction to Old English around. Concise, simple, and accessible, this text has both a reader and a grammar in one cover, containing selections from the major Old English poems and prose works.

The prose works include 'The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan', selections from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the preface by Alfred the Great to the medieval work on Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory. There are relatively few Old English prose works that have survived into the present day; there are even fewer authentically Old English pieces, as many Old English prose works are in fact translations of Latin pieces, and for some reason adapted their grammar to the Latin original rather than the Old English natural pattern.

The poetry exhibits the paired-verse pattern (although the translations accompanying them do not strive to keep the metrical pattern). The poetry include majors works such as Caedmon's Hymn, The Battle of Brunanburg, The Battle of Maldon, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, maxims, riddles, and other poems. There is no Beowulf contained here, nor any other heroic poems (such as Deor), as Diamond states that these are the most likely follow-up readings after one gains a grounding in Old English, and the poems contained here are often overlooked by students save for the most dedicated of scholars.

The texts here are normalised to Early West Saxon dialect, with a grammar very simplified; concepts are introduced that are directly useful for the texts contained herein. The glossary is similarly normalised, and cross-referenced for various verb forms and other vocabulary links such as prefixes and alternatives. In a remarkable insight on how students use texts, Diamond states that, for the purposes of this introductory text, notes have been eliminated, as students rarely refer to them anyway. The section on metrics introduces the five principle types of verses, as well as some minor variations.

Diamond includes a brief bibliography with dictionaries, grammars, commentaries and more; this is now somewhat out of date, but also shows the slow pace at which some aspects of Old English scholarship proceed, with references going back to volumes published in the late 1800s.

A very useful and fun text from which to learn!

Author Robert E. Diamond presents a sufficient, though incomplete, guide through Old English Grammar; and, to a student unaquainted with the syntax and grammar of inflected langauges, it proffers very good introductory information, supplying super paradigms, requisite for basic readings. The reader section, however, providing both prose and poetry selections, is far superior, comprising readable poetic paragons, and with its prose section epitomizes some basic tenets of Old English literature. An informative and detailed chapter on verse serves as an excellent supplement, and a comprehensive (for the purposes of the reader) glossary aids greatly in translation

Excellent for use with, for example, the new Beowulf translation. Diamond does a good job providing a nice balance between pronunciation, grammar, readings, and a dictionary. The dictionary could be longer, and I am sure our knowledge has progressed since 1973 (another edition, Robert?) but overall this book achieves very well what it sets out to do: provide a nice introduction to OE.

This book is intended for graduate students of English who might need to acquire a reading knowledge of Old English for their studies, but who are not necessarily knowledgeable in Indo-European linguistics or familiar with archaic, highly inflected languages.

The author begins with a simplified but fairly comprehensive grammar of Old English which runs about 40 pages, and covers pronunciation; an explanation of gender, number, and case(s); the forms of the definite and relative articles; strong and weak verbs; adjectives; nouns; additional sections dealing with more advanced declensions/conjugations of nouns and verbs; and i-umlaut.

I read the grammar several times initially, and returned to re-read several times as I progressed through the readings, to review some of the concepts. As an earlier reviewer noted, you don't want to rush through the introductory grammar in your haste to get to the Old English texts; only confusion and frustration will ensue.

I should note in respect to pronunciation that Prof. Diamond uses distinctive symbols to denote palatalized C and G, which allows the beginner to avoid having to check the rules constantly to determine if a given C or G needs to be palatized in its environment within a word. This allows the student to pronounce Old English with confidence from the beginning, and I found that I quickly internalized the use of palatalized C and G using this method.

The readings are interesting and challenging. They are printed with Old English on the left- and Modern English on the right-hand page, allowing the student to plunge right into reading Old English without memorizing long vocabulary lists, with minimal flipping back to the glossary. The readings are graded, increasing in complexity of grammar and vocabulary as one progresses, and also incorporate fewer word-for-word translations as the student is guided into Old English poetry; this makes the student work harder on translations as he/she advances through the readings, and prevents excessive reliance on the Modern English.

There is a full glossary in the back, which includes all divergent verb and noun forms for the student's convenience. For example, it lists "seoles", the genitive singular of "seolh"; and "slog", the preterite singular of "slean". For a beginner, these situations might otherwise be nightmarish, trying to feverishly determine the infinitive of the verb or nominative singular of the noun, sufficient to look it up and find its meaning.

This book fulfilled my fondest hopes, allowing me to gain a reading knowledge and proper pronunciation of Old English in a relatively short period of time, and I highly recommend it.

I bought both Prof. Diamond's Old English Grammar and Prof. Baker's Introduction to Old English after checking them out from my local library. They are both excellent works, but I prefer Prof. Diamond's book for a couple of reasons.

First, although trivial, I have learned other inflected languages such as Greek and Latin and they always present noun declensions for the various cases in the following order: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, etc. Prof. Diamond presents noun declensions in the same way while Prof. Baker's book presents them in the order nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, etc. It throws me off just enough to be irritating when I am trying to memorize the case endings.

Second, as mentioned in other reviews, Prof. Diamond presents translations with each text. This makes it possible to learn a few words and them jump straight into the texts without having to guess whether or not you understood the various pieces.

Prof. Baker's book has its merits such as its companion website and its more detailed discussion of grammar, but I would recommend starting to learn Old English with Prof. Diamond's book.

One more point - if you are considering buying both keep in mind that many of the literary samples in both overlap so if you buy Prof. Baker's book you should buy it because you want a better understanding of grammar not because you want more samples of Old English.

What can I say that hasn't been touched upon? This book is a slender yet FULL masterpiece of 'Old English' grammer and Metrics; I myself learned the basics of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxon Poetics from this book about a year ago, and am still referencing it almost everyday.
It packs ALOT of info in a small space; yet all the more reason to study such areas multiple times; in fact, I feel that the layout Professor Diamond uses here certainly encourages repetition in study,which is the best way to hammer stuff into your head.

After the great Grammer course, my personal favorite of this book is the chapter on 'Metrics'; explaining in terms understandable to any, I reference this section DAILY, to keep sharp on my poetics (as I am an alliterative poet myself). He covers all the verse forms (A,A-3,A-4,B,C,D,E), including Expanded verses and anacrusis.

The 'reader' is magnificent: a wonderful selection of Verse-Poetry, with facing-page layouts (original 'Old English' on the left, Translation on the right), and a well-thought selection of prose pieces in the same layout.
The Glossary is really good, and easy to use, featuring cross-referencing and etc.

I HIGLY RECOMMEND this Book to any student of Anglo-Saxon, or wielder of Alliterative Verse faithful to tradition.

Hail!

This is a very good introductory grammar for those who know nothing about Old English, but I preferred Peter Baker's work(Introduction to Old English) there. I suspect a lot of people would find this easier to use though and so I think the grammar section (as a real introduction) deserves 5 stars.

My only real complaint comes from the reader, which uses a facing page translation format so there is a substantial urge to "cheat" and look over at the other page when stuck. If the English translations are to be offered at all, I think they should be separated from the OE texts to reduce this problem. I'd actually take off 2 stars for this, meaning that the reader gets 3 stars and is better for advanced students than beginners.

So the grammar gets 5 stars and the reader 3. I guess that means I will rate it at 4 then.

This book is good for the beginner, even if he is learning Old English on his own and is a lazy student. I memorized the pronouns and articles, glanced over the nouns and verbs, and went on to the readings, which I read over and over again. The readings are interesting and with the parallel English text not too taxing, so even if you are studying while pushing your sleeping baby in his stroller you cannot help but begin to learn in a surprisingly short amount of time.

I give the book 5 stars because the author does exactly what he says he will in the introduction.