Teach Yourself Old English Package (Book + 2CDs)

A wonderful book for the beginner to learn Old English. The CDs help immensely. However, the male voice sounds as if he were reading a story to children at bed time and he tends to whisper and not enunciate clearly. I really had to strain to understand what he was reading. The female voice was fantastic. The exercises are well paced and well thought out. I was able to sight read the language very quickly.

As a newcomer to Old English, I have to say, if you take it at a steady pace, this book is helpfully written and fun to read. As someone who doesn't enjoy 'study' as much as they did, this is important. If I have a criticism, it would have to be that the spoken word on the CD is a little, er, dull. Other than that, it's pretty good.

Baby Cromwell

Pros: Good coverage of "supposed pronunciation of the day" in the print copy. Interesting passages that lend decent insight into the culture of the time. I have a half-dozen books on OE and this is the first one that gave me a "leg up" on acquiring a sense of pronunciation, context and interpretation.

Cons: More than a few typos (caught me a few times; made me look back for confirmation that it was a typo. On concluding it was, I realized I was learning, and seemed to know more than the typesetter!). One of the two speakers on the CD seems to have only a fair grasp of pronunciation (if you compare it to the book's suggested pronunciation, which "feels more natural") and this speaker has a rather stilted delivery that seems unnatural. Could just be that the speaker is trying to "emphasize" and is therefore speaking slowly.

Not a bad purchase, despite the cons; in fact, it's one of the best I've acquired, especially considering the cost.

The typical Old English book has a grammar, a vocabulary and a few excerpts from longer texts. Usually, Caedmon's Hymn is thrown in. While such packages are nice for linguists, they're not good for someone who is curious about Old English for its own sake.

Teach Yourself Old English, like Teach Yourself Beginner's Latin, lets the reader approach authentic Old English in small bites. The grammar and vocabulary are presented in a way that helps in deciphering the Old English on one's own. By the end, one has read a fair bit and has a sense of just how far English has come.

Teach Yourself Old English will not make one fluent in the language - not by a longshot - but it gives the necessary background for using bilingual Beowulfs (Chickering and Heamey translations to be preferred) for further exploration of the language and the culture.

If you're a graduate student in Germanic languages, this isn't for you. But if you're curious about where English really came from, this book is a great place to start learning.