Pronunciation

Generally, all letters in Middle English words were pronounced. (Silent letters in Modern English generally come from pronunciation shifts, which mean that pronunciation is no longer closely reflected by the written form because of fixed spelling constraints imposed by the invention of dictionaries and printing.) Therefore 'knight' was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with a pronounced 〈k〉 and the 〈gh〉 as the 〈ch〉 in German 'Knecht'), not [ˈnaɪt] as in Modern English.

In earlier Middle English all written vowels were pronounced. By Chaucer's time, however, the final 〈e〉 had become silent in normal speech, but could optionally be pronounced in verse as the meter required (but was normally silent when the next word began with a vowel). Chaucer followed these conventions: -e is silent in 'kowthe' and 'Thanne', but is pronounced in 'straunge', 'ferne', 'ende', etc. (Presumably, the final 〈y〉 is partly or completely dropped in 'Caunterbury', so as to make the meter flow.)

An additional rule in speech, and often in poetry as well, was that a non-final unstressed 〈e〉 was dropped when adjacent to only a single consonant on either side if there was another short 'e' in an adjoining syllable. Thus, 'every' sounds like "evry" and 'palmeres' like "palmers".

Toward latter part of Middle English, the Great Vowel Shift was changing the pronunciation of most long vowels from a Continental sound to a distinctly English sound. While Middle English was essentially written and spelled the way it sounded, the Great Vowel Shift caused many words to be pronounced differently from the Middle English spellings.