Osweald Bera 🧸arrived in my mailbox yesterday. This afternoon I spent a solid hour pouring over the text. I am giddy as a schoolgirl at being able to read the first chapter with about 80% accuracy and comprehension. I’m really excited about this linguistic adventure. I also have to say that I’m old enough to have learned to read with the See Spit Run readers and learning this way brings back fond memories of my first grade reading circle.
"Dead" Language Society? I guess I will get used to it. However it suggests that us OE gesīþas must be gāstas. I will have to think about that, though I DO feel dead some early, Saturday morning class days, tis true. :-)
Bless you, Colin. I’m a Classics major who wanted to be a medievalist but ended up with a US Military History PhD. Now in retirement, I can enjoy learning Old English at last - just ordered a copy of Osweald Bera.
Thank you so much for the lovely review, Joey! I'm honoured that you chose Ōsweald Bera to be your first non-Modern English book! I hope you enjoy getting into the primary Old English texts
Just ordered Osweald Bera today. I have been trying to learn OE for a few years now - I pick it up and put it down and never get past the stage of having a very basic vocabulary and being hopelessly confused by the grammar. Anyway I am very excited to try reading Osweald’s story. Wish me luck! (I may need it - ha ha!)
I've only just started Osweald Bera, and am in chapter 2. Something I am finding extremely helpful, in addition to multiple reads of the text, is to work on only a dozen or so lines at a time really thoroughly and to write them out. The coordination of see-think-write is really helping to solidify all the words in memory. I hope one day I can also listen to the text as well and read it aloud accurately.
“The monks were so deeply interested in the lecture that they failed to notice that the lecturer was, in fact, a bear, making it all up as he went along.”
Hello Colin! I received my copy of Osweald today. I've just leafed through it. This looks to be a fantastic pedagogical tool! Only one other work, to my knowledge, has attempted to (finally!) make OE available to the non-expert masses, and that book is not on this scale. Please accept my (our) heartfelt gratitude and admiration! I did 3 years of uni OE, including translating all of Beowulf and Exodus, but that was some 30 years ago and I'm now a little rusty on essential grammar (though I know a lot of words). I will use Osweald both as a refresher of the grammar but also to improve my ability in decoding OE prose, as one of the weaknesses of most (almost all?) uni OE courses is that they seek to propel students into translating the (admittedly beautiful) poetry before they have really mastered, and enjoyed the full flavour of, the equally absorbing prose.
May I be bold enough to "pimp" a couple of items I've authored in connection with OE here?
Osweald Bera 🧸arrived in my mailbox yesterday. This afternoon I spent a solid hour pouring over the text. I am giddy as a schoolgirl at being able to read the first chapter with about 80% accuracy and comprehension. I’m really excited about this linguistic adventure. I also have to say that I’m old enough to have learned to read with the See Spit Run readers and learning this way brings back fond memories of my first grade reading circle.
That's amazing to hear! I hope you enjoy the story as it progresses!
"Dead" Language Society? I guess I will get used to it. However it suggests that us OE gesīþas must be gāstas. I will have to think about that, though I DO feel dead some early, Saturday morning class days, tis true. :-)
How lucky we are, we students of Old English, that our gāstas 'ghosts' are actually our gastas 'guests' as well!
Ƿaet was god comeback.
Cool. I know Latin and Old Church Slavonic. Guessing that won’t help.
Not directly, but the underlying grammar will be very similar!
Bless you, Colin. I’m a Classics major who wanted to be a medievalist but ended up with a US Military History PhD. Now in retirement, I can enjoy learning Old English at last - just ordered a copy of Osweald Bera.
Thank you very much, Gretchen! I hope you enjoy your journey back into early medieval England with Ōsweald!
Hi Colin, I've just finished reading Osweald Bera and what a great book it is! I had never read a book in any language other than Modern English and never studied a dead language before - now thanks to you I have done both! I have written a review here https://open.substack.com/pub/joeybarber/p/on-learning-a-dead-language?r=2usgln&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you so much for the lovely review, Joey! I'm honoured that you chose Ōsweald Bera to be your first non-Modern English book! I hope you enjoy getting into the primary Old English texts
Just ordered Osweald Bera today. I have been trying to learn OE for a few years now - I pick it up and put it down and never get past the stage of having a very basic vocabulary and being hopelessly confused by the grammar. Anyway I am very excited to try reading Osweald’s story. Wish me luck! (I may need it - ha ha!)
That's so lovely to hear — thank you! I hope you enjoy reading about Ōsweald's adventure :)
I've only just started Osweald Bera, and am in chapter 2. Something I am finding extremely helpful, in addition to multiple reads of the text, is to work on only a dozen or so lines at a time really thoroughly and to write them out. The coordination of see-think-write is really helping to solidify all the words in memory. I hope one day I can also listen to the text as well and read it aloud accurately.
Writing is very powerful! I think you're on to something there. I hope you're enjoying your read-through so far!
“The monks were so deeply interested in the lecture that they failed to notice that the lecturer was, in fact, a bear, making it all up as he went along.”
@Emily Spinach this could help your gawain project
Hello Colin! I received my copy of Osweald today. I've just leafed through it. This looks to be a fantastic pedagogical tool! Only one other work, to my knowledge, has attempted to (finally!) make OE available to the non-expert masses, and that book is not on this scale. Please accept my (our) heartfelt gratitude and admiration! I did 3 years of uni OE, including translating all of Beowulf and Exodus, but that was some 30 years ago and I'm now a little rusty on essential grammar (though I know a lot of words). I will use Osweald both as a refresher of the grammar but also to improve my ability in decoding OE prose, as one of the weaknesses of most (almost all?) uni OE courses is that they seek to propel students into translating the (admittedly beautiful) poetry before they have really mastered, and enjoyed the full flavour of, the equally absorbing prose.
May I be bold enough to "pimp" a couple of items I've authored in connection with OE here?
http://germanic-studies.org/An-Old-Germanic-poetic-lexicon.htm
http://germanic-studies.org/Lost-Old-English-words-and-their-cognates-in-modern-Germanic.htm
http://germanic-studies.org/Heathen-and-mythological-elements-in-English-place-names.htm
Remarkable! Congratulations for such a clear, complete and truly valuable curriculum.