Comment by Amezarak
1 day ago
Are you sure you haven't been victimized by manuscripts with modernized spellings?
When I look up ealry manuscript scans of the Comedy, I get:
*Nel mezo delcamin dinra uita / mi trouai puna(?) felua (long s letter) ofcura / che la diricta (some bizarre letter in there) uia era fmarrita (long s).
https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/view/PR-INCU...
> puna(?)
Note that the p is struck through below its loop; that is probably an abbreviation for "per". That would be an example of the spelling being the same as modern Italian, but the manuscript is written in a kind of shorthand because writing takes a lot of time and effort.
dinrã is probably also an abbreviation, given the diacritic.
> diricta (some bizarre letter in there)
No, the letters are exactly what you've just typed. There is a ligature between the c and the t. You could call this a difference in font, but not in spelling. (Though diricta for modern diritta is a real difference.)
> Nel mezo delcamin
This is a real spelling difference. There's a really glaring one in stanza 3, where poco is spelled pocho in contravention of the rules of Italian spelling. I don't know what an Italian today would think if confronted with -cho-.