Nouns: "A noun is a person, place or thing" is a rough
definition of nouns. Nouns are naming words. "King," "Alfred,"
"crown," "kingdom," and "power" are all nouns.We want to get right into translating and reading Old English
sentences, but first we need to review a few basic grammatical concepts. Since
no one speaks Old English as a native language (although some scholars are so
good with it that they come close; J.R.R. Tolkien composed poetry in Old English),
we can't use many of the conversational approaches used to teach modern languages.
Old English is thus taught the way Latin was taught for centuries: as a "dead"
language, one that people read more than they speak. This grammar book attempts
to make such an approach easier and more exciting than earlier methods of teaching,
but in the end there is a significant amount of memorization that one has to
do in order to understand the texts. Of course there is the memorization of
vocabulary words, which is necessary for learning all languages. But to understand
Old English, a student needs to learn to recognize certain grammatical concepts.
Although using the approach of "it just feels right" can be a perfectly
acceptable approach to learning the grammar of a living, spoken language, it
simply isn't a powerful enough tool for learning Old English. We need some terms
to talk about grammar.
We begin with a review of the parts of speech. Every word in a language can be put into one or more categories that explain how that word is used. Knowing what part of speech a word is will help you to translate Old English. There are, for our purposes in this simplified grammar book, seven parts of speech that you need to be able to recognize..
Nouns: "A noun is a person, place or thing" is a rough
definition of nouns. Nouns are naming words. "King," "Alfred,"
"crown," "kingdom," and "power" are all nouns.
Verbs: "Verb: that's what's happening."
Verbs are action words. "Ruled," "wears," "carries,"
"to wander," and "fought" are all verbs.
Pronouns: Pronouns are used in place of nouns.
"He," "she," "it," "who," "whom,"
"that," "which," "we," "they" and "us"
are all pronouns. This grammar book groups words like "this," "that,"
"these," and "those," as well as "a," "an"
and "the" with the pronouns and calls these words demonstrative
pronouns, although grammarians would probably call some of them articles,
and linguists would identify them as determiners.
Adjectives: Adjectives are words used to describe
nouns. "Royal," "golden," "lofty," "powerful,"
"hardy," and "strong" are all adjectives.
Adverbs: Adverbs are words used to describe
verbs or adjectives. "Slowly," "steadily," "angrily,"
"powerfully," and "very" are all adverbs.
Prepositions: Prepositions are short explanatory
words that indicate things such as location, direction and possession: "with,"
"to," "under," "over," "by" and "for"
are all prepositions.
Conjunctions: Conjunctions are connecting words: "and," "but,"
"or" and "nor" are all conjunctions.
Click here for some exercises to practice recognizing the parts of speech.