Sweet on Henry Sweet in the Digital Age

(And a worksheet based on Ælfric's De temporibus anni)

Somewhere in the virtual stacks of the Internet Archive lies an Old English grammar and reader available for free. Published over a hundred years ago and totaling just 128 pages, it aims to “make things easy for the beginner.” Language learning—or, in the author’s more daunting words, “practical mastery”—has various stages, with one being, in his view, “[understanding] written texts.” This involves recognizing grammatical forms, not constructing them, as further stages of language learning—most notably writing or speaking—demand.

The author, Henry Sweet, was a British grammarian, philologist and trailblazer in the pedagogy of language learning. In the realm of Old English studies, both historical and linguistic, his name circulates alongside contemporary heavyweights William Walter Skeat (1835-1912) and Oswald Cockayne (1809-1873), both of whom I hope to return to in future posts. In fact, Sweet was under Cockayne’s tutelage at school, though at least one scholar believed that this connection, “purely fortuitous in origin, does not seem to have been responsible for [Sweet’s] beginning the study of Old English” (Wyld, 1901: 73).

Despite Sweet’s legacy as a linguistic pioneer, his aversion to standard methods of language learning warms the hearts of frustrated twenty-first century students. According to Mark Atherton, Sweet, showing little academic promise at first, was “left with a distaste for Latin and Greek, and…came to despise the lifeless and meaningless methods by which these (and other) languages were taught at most Victorian public schools” (Atherton, 2008: 42). As Atherton notes further, many of Sweet’s colleagues had similar, unpalatable experiences at school, later “[expressing] equal distaste for the supposed ‘mind-training’ provided by a classical education” (Atherton, 2008: 42). This is not unlike the anecdote I shared of Churchill’s experience with memorizing Latin noun declensions in a previous post.

Sweet’s distaste for Greek and Latin did not extend to all languages; instead, he took a shine to Scandinavian languages, and eventually Old English and Old Norse. If you’re struggling with aspects of Latin grammar, then take solace in the fact that Sweet barely passed his classics degree requirements, leaving many of us inspired by the idea that, eventually, we all find our niche and a language or linguistic family that we’re inspired to study!

Although Sweet’s contributions to Old English studies, including his translations of various staples, like King Alfred’s Pastoral Care, are significant in the context of early scholarly editions, Sweet’s Old English grammar texts concern us here. His Anglo-Saxon Reader, for example, first published in 1876, has been adapted, re-edited and re-published several times. Henry Cecil Wyld regarded the reader as essential in “[turning] the tide” in England “in favour of Old English,” which had previously been the domain of German academics.

Steven Darian, analyzing Sweet’s approach to language learning, highlights his preference for an adapted form of the Direct Method, “emphasizing pronunciation and phonetics as the central line of development” (Darian, 1969: 545). It can be true that this approach is sometimes de-emphasized among independent language learners, particularly outside formal classroom instruction. However, Sweet justified this recommendation, arguing that, even if the learner’s aim is reading proficiency, “the living spoken form of every language…[should be] the foundation of its study” (Sweet, 1884: 36). Through mastering pronunciation and the sound of a language, Sweet believed that a more thorough understanding of a language—its rhythms and mutations—can be achieved.

The trouble with this, particularly in Old English, is that outside of the academy, few opportunities for speaking practice exist. Moreover, no Old English textbooks are geared towards acquiring speaking proficiency. This is not surprising: unless you’re a die-hard LARP’er whose character depends on fluent Mercian, opportunities rarely arise on vacation, even at Sutton Hoo, to speak the language of England’s early inhabitants. Nevertheless, there is always the option of repetition. High-quality recordings, such as those by Dr. Drout at Wheaton College, are one such option, allowing you to hear sound differences and note how the written word is actually pronounced.

Darian also summarized Sweet’s tenets for language learning and teaching, which seem worthwhile distilling here:

1. The sentence is the unit of language, not the word.

2. Sentences and words depend on context; independent of it, their grammatical forms and meanings can be ambiguous.

3. Language ought to be studied through connected texts, in addition to grammatical analysis.

4. To optimize grammatical instruction, sentences should be contextual and meaningful.

5. The law of association governs the psychology of language learning: we learn through associations.

Although these may not seem particularly ground-breaking, they do emphasize an important shift from strict memorization, to an emphasis on association and context. Darian goes onto note the progression that Sweet saw inherent in language acquisition:

1. Mechanical: Largely focused on learning pronunciation;

2. Grammatical: No surprise here—know your grammar;

3. Idiomatic and Lexical: Acquired mainly through reading exposure; and

4. Literary: The stage we all aspire to—reading unadapted texts.

Sweet had no shortage of colourful commentary on the last point, writing that, “The ordinary practice of not only introducing the learner to the literature of a language before he has mastered its grammar and vocabulary, but also of making its classics the vehicle of elementary grammar instruction, is a most detestable one.” Instead, Sweet argued that progress can be achieved through “condensed treatises on special subjects, such as history, geography, natural science,” and so forth (Sweet, 1884: 76). I can certainly testify to the merits of this approach; much to the collective gasp of any classicists reading this Substack post, nothing led me to dread Latin class more than cracking open Horace or Catullus and reading line after line, largely uninterested, in the subject matter. However, stick a Medieval text on divination, astronomy, astrology or magic in front of me, and I can be engaged for hours! It’s a delicate balance between engagement, immersion and context.

Thus, it seemed fitting that the Old English text I adapted in the worksheet this week (available below to paid subscribers) was, in fact, Sweet’s own adaptation of Ælfric’s De temporibus anni (On the Times of the Year). In it, basic grammatical concepts are introduced, alongside a small vocabulary, making it comparatively easier for the beginner not only to grasp the overall meaning of the text, but also acquire some familiarity with vocabulary and constructs that appear in other contexts, such as in homilies and commentaries on Genesis.

Ælfric and Cosmology

The original, unadapted text is one of the foundational tomes of early Medieval English cosmology in the wake of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform. Based on the natural philosophical and time-reckoning texts of the Venerable Bede, Ælfric’s text—despite its Latin title—is written in Old English and would be an ideal target text for the precocious beginner. In it, Ælfric describes the story of Creation familiar to those with some knowledge of Judeo-Christian cosmology. While successive chapters discuss not only the astronomical foundations of calendrical time-reckoning, they also introduce the reader to concepts around time, the seasons, meteorology and, in this excerpt, the mechanics of the sun (sēo sunne) and moon (se mōna) and how they impact the experience of the day (dæġ) and night (niht), as well as how the hours of the day are counted (ġetealde). This reading also highlights the distinctions between prepositions, mainly dative and accusative, illustrating how motion can be an important tool in distinguishing the function of preposition, in addition to the case endings.

Although there is a little grammar tossed in, the exercises focus on building vocabulary, with an emphasis on identifying synonyms and antonyms. Three fill-in-the-blank verb conjugation paradigms (indicative mood, Class 1 verbs only) are included to aid in pattern recognition. A few sentences ask you to produce the missing Old English word, while the last page contains five very short sentences, excerpted from myriad sources, with similar vocabulary embedded throughout to practice contextual recognition.

Much to Henry’s chagrin, I will admit that I am lazy when it comes to macrons (this extends to Latin, too), so I have inconsistently applied them here—obviously a negligent move on my part, and one that he would no doubt disagree with given his emphasis on accurate pronunciation. Forgive me, Mr. Sweet, I promise to improve!

As always, I do apologize for any mistakes. I kept catching more and more with each subsequent printing, so I hope this edition is error-free, but if it isn’t, you can also write to me at studieslatin@gmail.com with any helpful suggestions so I can correct and reissue these worksheets to subscribers. Ultimately, I hope that their lack of perfection don’t preclude their utility!

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Bibliography:

Atherton, Mark. “‘To observe things as they are without regard to their origin’: Henry Sweet's general writings on language in the 1870s.” Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas Bulletin, 51:1, 41-58.

Darian, Steven. “Backgrounds of Modern Language Teaching: Sweet, Jespersen, and Palmer.” The Modern Language Journal, 1969, 53:8, 545- 550.

Sweet, Henry. “The Practical Study of Language,” in Collected Papers of Henry Sweet, arr. by Henry Cecil Wyld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), pp. 34-55. [The original article was published in 1884.]

Wyld, Henry Cecil. “Henry Sweet.” The Modern Language Quarterly (1900-1904), 4:2, 73-79.