Learn Old English with Leofwin Paperback – January 28, 2013

This book has been the perfect way to introduce both the language of Old English as well as the culture of early medieval England to my two children, ages 9 and 11, whom I home school. We've been learning Latin (Getting Started with Latin and Orberg's Lingua Latina) and Greek (Gatchell's Elementary Greek) together for four or five years, and as we have reached the medieval period in our second time through the four-year sweep of world history for my older child (year 1 ancients, year 2 medieval, year 3 Renaissance and Enlightenment, Year 4 American history), I thought we might take a break from Greek and substitute a bit of Old English instead for a semester or two. I've been picking up used OE books as I see them at book sales, etc. for years in anticipation of doing this, but all of them seem to have been printed in about 1890, and really didn't seem appropriate for using with children (or easy for lazy adults like myself)."Learn Old English with Leofwin" is just what I was looking for: I know we won't be reading Beowulf in the original after this book, but it's been incredibly interesting to see how many modern English words come from OE roots, and this aspect has made it easier to remember the meanings of words too. The lessons cover daily life of the time, which also makes it easier for children to understand, and includes written sections in modern English that describe various aspects of life and culture of that period.A couple suggestions that might improve this book for future editions: 1) Not all the words are in the dictionary at the back of the book, which can be frustrating (I know that sometimes it's because the word is a plural or different form, but at this beginning level, it's still maddening to not be able to look up the meaning of a word). 2) I wished there had been more time spent on the pronunciation of OE at the very beginning. There's just a one-page listing of pronunciations, but this aspect of the language is quite confusing, with all the different vowel combinations that are very similar (ea, e-with-a-line-over-it a, the combined character that looks like a spliced with e, plain a, line-over-a, plain e, line-over-e). I won't even get into g or c, for which it would be very helpful with new words if the author would indicate which of the several possible pronunciations for each letter is appropriate, for those of us whose computer sound is non-functional despite every attempt by IT people to fix it). Even though the pronunciation of OE, like that of all ancient languages, is somewhat contested, I think it's more important to pronounce it as correctly as possible (than say for Latin), because the correct pronunciation of OE words often make them sound more like the modern word (even though the spelling looks unrelated and totally crazy), and therefore makes words easier to remember and just makes OE make a lot more sense.Other than those suggestions, I feel that this book is a much-needed, painless way for both children and adults to learn a bit of our mother tongue (and more about our modern language), as well as about this period of history. I wholeheartedly recommend it for home schooling families, and I'm looking forward to the publication of Book 2.

About two years ago I decided to teach myself Old English. It has been quite a difficult journey, because while there are some shared words and similarities between old and new (modern) English, the truth is that Old English is, to us, a foreign language. The grammar is way, way different than modern English, and once you get done learning the few hundred words that are similar or identical (gold, God, etc.) and congratulating yourself for being able to say "Hello! My name is Bob and I am hungry and I live in England" in Old English, you end up here: "willath hy hine athecgan gif he on preat cymeth." And at that point you realize that the complex Old English training/learning materials out there are far too overwhelming for the average adult learner to deal with.This book is the antidote. It is VERY easy to understand and digest in manageable chunks, and literally from Page 1 you get a sense that you're making progress and learning how to read Old English sentences. The language study is combined with useful cultural tidbits, and the book covers things that, in retrospect, seem blindingly obvious but that other books fail to cover -- such as the fact that the written letters of Old English don't all look like our letters; no matter how hard and how much you memorize verb tables, you will not be able to read the simplest "real" Old English text until you learn to recognize how they wrote their s, r, and g's. And especially the w's, which were called wynns and looked like thin, squashed p's. I learned that on about page 10 of this book, and it quickly informed me as to why, after managing to get the basic gist of the language in my head, I had still been unable to read a SINGLE word in an actual handwritten Old English document. Well, now I can. It isn't that difficult.The book will not fully prepare you for reading Old English texts; it is more like a primer that will get you launched in the right direction. To read the Seafarer or Beowulf in original Old English, you'll need to take it further than this book. There are plenty of other books that can help you do that, once you've got the basics down.Although superficially aimed at children, in point of fact it is a brilliant exercise in adult learning. I would go as far as to say that this book is the most ingenious piece of adult learning material I have ever encountered on any topic. It is simply flawless at getting a newbie engaged with its topic.Very sadly, I heard that the author Matt Love has passed away, so I guess we will not be seeing the additional volumes which were planned for this series. My understanding is that many more volumes were planned, and one can only imagine how they would have propelled the adult learner to mastery of this difficult subject matter. A true loss.

Last fall, I did an Old English tutorial with a colleague, an emeritus professor of English. We met once a week and he had me translate Old English with the help of a glossary. It was fun, and got me wondering if there was any way to do a more holistic study of Old English--you know, learn to speak, learn some useful phrases, maybe learn about the culture, etc.Lo and behold, I discovered Learn Old English with Leofwin! I found it first through our public library's interlibrary loan, but once I borrowed it, I knew I had to buy it. It's so fun to go through the lessons to learn phrases like "Leofwin lives in Prittewella with his wife Goldie and his two children" in Old English! Lessons are fun, and illustrated with delightful drawings. There are also short readings on Anglo-Saxon culture. AND you can find recordings to listen to online! So while I was translating Apollonius of Tyre, I was also going through these lessons. My colleague found the book amusing, too.