Useful Group: Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland

[Sæbbi]

Greetings,
 
Some may know of this organisation: TOEBI or Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland, see: https://www.toebi.org.uk/
 
There is a useful resources page with various links. Primarily, of course, it is for university academics who teach Old English as part of English degrees. When you read the newsletters, one gets the feel that there are a lot of reluctant students who know little of grammar and need to be pushed into the subject!
 
Anyway, I joined the organisation (any student can join in actual fact) because their root mission is to promote the teaching of Old English, and to that end offer research grants and so forth.
I hope it's of interest and thought worthy of joining.
Best,
Sæbbi

[Eanflaed]

It sounds great Sæbbi, thank you.

[Phyllis]

again - great!

the resources page is really good as a quick starter page for finding things on-line (which is what one would hope for!)

Lots of people are put off learning languages because grammar is not often taught, or is taught badly, it seems to me. Don't get me started on pre-frontal adverbs! Annoyingly they give language teaching a bad name 

It would be good to hear how you get on as a member, and what else that offers you

Phyllis

[Sæbbi]

I think the group was definitely more beneficial during pre-Covid times as they organised conferences. But, now, much seems to be in abeyance. Although, that said, they are now instituting an Old English reading group via zoom to be held via participating institutions. To quote an excerpt from a recent mail:

"This would be a collaborative set of sessions that would take place each month and would be hosted by a different intuition each time. At present, we recognise that it has been difficult to meet and discuss our field, especially with those who are outside of our own university communities.
We intend for the host intuition to choose 15 - 25 lines or so of Old English verse to present and discuss matters of language, themes, imagery, history, or any other interesting detail about the text. These sessions will be open to all members via Zoom regardless of Old English proficiency. This will be a great opportunity to meet members, old and new! "

I don't know whether I would term the gesithas as an 'institution' in the conventional sense, but I suppose there could be an opportunity to participate if anyone wanted to. I am not advanced enough yet in Old English so I will not try. Perhaps, you can just sign in and watch/listen.
Lastly, I suppose the other benefit of membership is, I guess, the satisfaction of contributing some money to the worthy cause of promoting Old English learning. Not many organisations do that!

Sæbbi

[Phyllis]

I'm very tempted! My proficiency is very mediocre, but it sounds fabulous. However, I do need to be careful about over-committing, so might keep it in the back pocket for now.

If anyone else does go along it would be great to hear about the sessions

[David]

It is difficult to get every macron right. I have been using macrons for years but I always seem to miss some. Most dictionaries and books use macrons but they tend not to put macrons on Anglo Saxon texts. A rough guide is that if it is a long vowel in modern English then it probably was in Old English. In Middle English some short vowels became long and vice versa. Examples in your text, where you missed some macrons, are he, now, to and we.
It appears that for long diphthongs the stress was originally at the end but it quickly switched to the beginning so most people, not Bosworth, put the macron on the first letter. One diphthong you missed was betwēonan.

[Phyllis]

Hi David

I think this should have been on the Language discussion

But thank you for checking! Honestly, how could I miss he and we?