Oh, I've been gone a long time, exploring in Scandinavian lands with my Viking cousins.

I've also been working through Mitchell's An Invitation to Old English and Anglo-Saxon England which has been interesting. I recommend it. In addition to the language, there are sections on Anglo-Saxon history and culture with appropriate texts to illustrate with translations.

Very interesting read, and giving a nice picture of life in Anglo-Saxon England. This is a big book and academic. No easy read. It's diverted most of my limited study time away from the language and to the culture. Worthwhile, but, you know....

I did notice that reading The Battle of Finnsburh in Old English I'm started to be able to read some lines without looking every thing up. So progress is being made, however slowly.

Heorot

So, I've been reading Beowulf in NE translation and OE in parallel. Doing a bit of NE, then switching to OE for the same passage and back again. Fun, but slow going. I'm using the Frederick Rebsamen version for my main NE text, but also going back to Heaney.

I also have both the Marijane Osborne and Bertha Rogers translations that I use for additional reference for some passages. Rogers also illustrated and signed it and it's beautiful. I have #65 of 100.

Hoping to do more actual OE language study after Christmas...

Between what I'd already learned and what I am now learning, I feel pretty confident reading most of the OE posts in the meadhalls and taverns of Germania. Still have to look up a word (Did he say something nice, or is that a challenge?), but it's pretty cool to "get" most of it.

Tip for self-learners. DO the exercises. Don't just read through them but actually write the answers out and check them. It helps a lot!

Kind of fun (OK, fun is relative and it's not as much fun as archery) to be working through First Steps in OE by Steven Pollington. I'm through section 1 and working on section 2. I'm using Teach Yourself Old English as a backup for now. I use TYS when I just need an alternate explanation, which is seldom. I'd like to buy one of the "classic" texts or possibly Peter Baker's book, Introduction to Old English to use as an additional resource. Message me with your thoughts....

I use the Baker online site a lot during my lunch hour at work. Pretty cool and it has OE Aerobics, a kind of online tutorial.

OK, I can buy it, but the practice 4.3 exercise on p41 asks you to give the OE for 110 and the answer on p42 is hund ond tīen or "hundred and ten". Maybe it can be both ways, but this is not explicit.

I looked at Peter Baker's online OE book ("Chapter 9: Numbers) and it doesn't clarify much, but says "These curious forms seem to reflect a number system, common to all the earliest Germanic languages, in which counting proceeded by twelves and sixty was a significant number in much the same way that one hundred is now." (Baker, Introduction to Old English)

I am restarting to learn Old English (OE) after not having any real exposure to it since college, 20+ years ago.

I took a medieval lit class and enjoyed it, especially the two or three weeks we spent on OE. I even saved the book. Recently I dug out an old copy of Teach Yourself Old English from the 60s that I'd picked up used in college and got out my old Medieval reader. I had fun trying to pick some of it out, so I then bought an OE student edition of Beowulf. It has glosses of some of the text on the right side.

Now I've bought Stephen Pollington's First Steps in Old English and I've found it very helpful. Next up in the accompanying tape.