Textbook

A new book about the history of English

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More than 50 years ago, Barbara Strang published her highly innovative book A History of English (1970, Methuen £2.25) which, daringly, began its chronological treatment of the English language in the (then) present-day, with “Changes in living memory” (Strang was born in 1925), and then worked its way backwards. The first chapter in the chronological sequence was devoted to “1970-1770”, and the final chapter covered the period “Before 370”.

The obvious advantage of this strategy is that you can start readers off in a place they are familiar with, and then take them on a journey to increasingly remote and less familiar periods of time. Strang’s way of dealing with this material was an intriguing and attractive one, and in … ↪

Revolution in Yiddish teaching: The New Yiddish Textbook In eynem

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It was nothing less than a revolution that hit the world of Yiddish teaching this summer, when the multimedia Yiddish textbook In eynem (White Goat Press, 2020) was published. For many years, Yiddish students have been studying the language with Uriel Weinreich’s College Yiddish from 1949, or with Selva Zucker’s Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture from 1995.

Now, Yiddish students and teachers have a more up-to-date alternative. In eynem is a monumental textbook, counting 800 pages (split up in two volumes), with beautifully illustrated dialogues, word explanations, exercises and texts about Jewish culture. It features a goldmine of material for the first two years of Yiddish studies. A dedicated website offers even more teaching material, e.g. … ↪