At the same time, there may be true grammatical, lexical, or cultural barriers to comprehending the text don't hesitate to ask me about these, because if you are confused by them, probably others are as well. If you see the phrase "He was the hendest man olive," you can be sure that the writer is not talking about kalamatas, but rather that he is using an o rather than an a. Few Middle English writers are trying to trip up their readers, so if you are presented with a seemingly illogical sentence construction or word, take the simplest grammatical or denotative path (at least for starters). Keep the accompanying pronunciation guide to hand, but also keep in mind that vowel sounds (in particular) may shift somewhat from one dialect to another. There are no silent ks or gs the final e is ALWAYS sounded as a schwa (unless it is a terminal y sound, as in "hende" = "handy"). (It's a good way to avoid odd looks from your roommate or cat.) You might want to form reading groups for this class, in which you gather to take turns reading the texts to each other. Moreover, because of the phonetic "spelling" conventions, words seen with the eye often make more sense when heard with the ear. Most Middle English literature was written to be read out to a crowd of listeners, and its poetry (and prose) is more comprehensible via ear as well as eye. And in courses where the texts come from a variety of locales and time periods, you will find substantial spelling changes from poem to poem reading phonetically (and being flexible about vowel pronunciation) will improve your comprehension and reading speed. There is no spelling consistency in Middle English authors and scribes wrote what they spoke (and heard).
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