Well. It's outdated, and there are several things that are incorrect:
1) The use of
Ma to mean 'yes'. It only means 'Good!' as an interjection, e.g. "I passed the exam!" "Good!". The only known way to say 'yes' is
Athon = Yes I will in response to a question.
2) The use of male and female personal pronouns (
ho,
ha). These are earlier Noldorin and didn't survive the transition into later Sindarin. You will find them used in the dialogue of the films, but this was because they predate the publication of several linguistic notes and journals. Modern Sindarin uses
Te = He/she/it is.
3) Using
Uin for 'I am not'. This does exist but is much older, see the section on negation in
this lesson.
4) "ion (pl. ion)". The plural of Ion is Yn. Amusingly he states this himself on page 34. Also the usage of Sell for 'daughter'; this is older usage, the word is 'Iell'.
5) The use of 'mi' instead of 'vi' for 'in (a place)'. I only recently swapped this one myself, and bizarrely 'vi' does make an appearance on page 56.
6) He notes that 'LH' and 'RH' may alter under soft mutation differently depending on the word but doesn't expound upon why, and which ones.
7) His soft mutations following '
a' (and) are flat out wrong unless you want to only speak in an archaic fashion (i.e. like an Elf from the First Age). I teach modern Third Age+ Sindarin.
8) The blanket plural rule of 'if an 'a' is followed by r, l and an aspirated stop the final a changes to e' doesn't have any evidence.
9) No mention that
AW changes differently for plural mutation depending on whether it's in a monosyllabic word or not.
10) His use of the infinitive is outdated. He uses the
-i ending (Pedi, Teli) - this is old Noldorin, modern Sindarin uses the same ending as the gerund (-
ad/-ed/-od depending on the verb type).
11) The object pronouns are completely messed up.
12) Lesson 9, past tense of I-stem verbs is practically entirely fictional. It gives you the 3rd person past tenses of two verbs in particular, Gwedh- = to bind, and Had- = to throw, as Ewend (he bound) and Achant (he threw) respectively. Except Tolkien himself wrote down how to form these two past tenses, and it's
Hant = He threw, and
Gwedhant = He bound. This point I think is one of the most salient.
13) Because this was published before the publication of Parma Eldalamberon #22 the future tense lesson is missing quite a lot of information.
14) He uses 'ae' for 'if'.
Pe is a much better reconstruction (Ae is also a reconstruction).
15) Lesson 11 makes me want to give up when it talks about 'analagous past tenses'. This is pure supposition.
16) The discussion about 'aen' is outdated as we know now exactly what it does. It doesn't mean 'may'.
17) The dative pronouns are messed up (much like the object).
That all aside, I have always liked the general layout of his lessons with a short dialogue to introduce vocabulary followed by the vocabulary in a table. I make no comment upon the tengwar because I don't read it and have no interest in it.
?!!!!!