TY Complete Old English Holiday Mini-Challenge

[Nicola]

I've been thinking about learning OE for a while now, but never managed to actually start, so this mini-challenge has come at the right time. Please count me in.

[IronMike]

Sorry to post and disappear. Spent last night deep in my Nanowrimo writing. Thanks to all for joining! In answer to someone's question above, I have no idea if the new book is different from the old book. I can look at Amazon's "look inside" when I get home as I know it points to the old version, and I'll compare it to this new one and report back.

[Mista]

The book arrived yesterday, and I've had a quick look. My first impression is that once I get used to the spelling and sound system, the rest will be a piece of cake (everything is relative, of course, but I studied Ancient Greek). I'm glad there's audio - it's not obvious in a textbook teaching a dead language, but judging from the introduction, the author knows its importance.

Another potential difficulty of reading Old English is, of course, the cultural aspects. Incidentally, I read a book (in Norwegian by a Norwegian) about the Norwegian king Saint Olav this summer, and my motivation for doing that was my trip to Iceland. However, while there wasn't much about Iceland in the book (the connection is simply that our main source for this part of Norwegian history is the Icelander Snorre Sturlason), there was plenty about England. It turns out that the most "glorious" and well known (to Norwegian school kids) period of Norwegian history is precisely the same as the period which Complete Old English takes its texts from, and the Danish king Knut who is mentioned in the introduction, was also either the ally or the enemy of most Norwegian kings and nobles at the time. While we mostly learned about the Norwegian parts of this history in school, the book I read this summer was more interested in presenting a broader picture, as one of the defining aspects of the viking nobility was presicely the fact that they traveled a lot all over Europe.

In other words, I have already, unwittingly, done my first homework of this challenge a long time ago

[David1917]

Ooh, I shouldn't, but I just may!

Do you know if the new book is substantially different than older editions? My public library has one, but it's from 1964.

That one is by Leslie Blakeley and NOT the same one - it is more the "traditional" grammar/translation approach, from what I understand.

The newest TYS is by Mark Atherton, there is an older edition by him as well (the spine is white with a yellow TYS logo) which is the same content-wise, the new one just has a few more chapters. I posted some side-by-side pics of both books in the Classical Languages Study Group.

The online audio is the exact same that came on CD's with the older Mark Atherton book.

[David1917]

As for my participation in the mini-challenge: I have already completed the first several lessons awhile back, but I will probably need to review them the first couple days of break to get back into it and then pick up. After that, my goal will be to complete one lesson per day to at least *see* everything in the book. While I won't necessarily need a thorough knowledge of Old English, I am scheduled to write an article next semester discussing the Saxon Myth and the study of Old English in early America, and so being able to pull extracts from the Chronicle, etc. might be relevant.

[iguanamon]

Being one who almost never participates in challenges, nor dabbles, this one looks interesting to me. I have the book, and now an account at TY for the audio. It's a shame there's no DLI course for Old English. OK, maybe they're learning it at area 51 where the time machine is. Hope they don't accidentally kill one of my ancestors or a butterfly- oops, did I just write that? Please disregard this erroneous statement. There is no such thing as time travel... except in books, archaeology, historic tourism. That's my story.

I've never done a TY course before, so it will be interesting to give one of their courses a go. My family goes a long way back in England. So, it's, well, a heritage language for me, and really for all native English-speakers, but not one which we can use much when traveling . I'm looking at it also as a way to ease my way into exploring Germanic languages at a massive and huge discount! So sign me up, even though I am slammed over the holidays, I'll give it a go.

[IronMike]

Hurray!

@iguanamon, I did the TY Complete Esperanto audio/book and it was excellent.

All: More later this week about our start on 15 December! Everyone excited?!

[David1917]

Final papers go in on Thursday and Friday. Saturday will be sleeping and mind-numbing television. Sunday will be TYS Old English. Let us do this.

[LunaMoonsilver]

I definitely don't need to join another challenge...

And yet...

I'm obviously going to do this.

[Deinonysus]

Unfortunately Old English doesn't fit well into my current schedule so I'll need to back out. But I'll be watching this thread closely, good luck and have fun everyone!