An Introduction to the Study of Old High German (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Introduction to the Study of Old High German<br><br>This introduction to the study of Old High German aims at determining for the English student the position and importance of Old High German amid the sister languages of Germanic. After many years experience of teaching Philology at Oxford I have arrived at the conclusion that the English student of Germanic is at the outset greatly hampered by the lack of scientific English books on the subject. In German such books exist in abundance, but it is a fact which we in England have too long overlooked, that German methods of arrangement, however excellent, are not adapted to the previous training of the English student. My intention has been to compile a grammar of Old High German which shall provide the serious student of the language with all the material that he will require to master it, not to treat Old High German, however, as an entity in itself, but to link it at once with the parent Germanic, and to link Germanic in outline to Indo-Germanic. The student will thus be enabled from the beginning to utilize for this new subject his knowledge of Greek and Latin. In this respect my grammar differs from such others as Sievers' AngelsiicJisische Granunatik Braune's Althochdentsche Grammatik, Noreens Altnordische Grammatik, which presuppose a wide knowledge of Germanic philology in general, and give no help to the learner not thus equipped.<br><br>I have sought to avoid this danger, and to make my grammar from the outset clear and comprehensible in itself, and on the other hand I have strenuously tried to avoid the faults of many elementary primers, which attain apparent clearness at the expense of accuracy.<br><br>Germanic philology offers many still unsolved problems, and many knotty questions on which authoritative scholars hold different views.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.