Reading this play, Othello, we can find so many difficulties reading his unfamiliar and twist words. Especially in today’s world where everyone is so used to blogs, webpages where almost all the information is update to today’s language plus it is summarize to find the key point as soon as you enter in the page. We are so used to just take a quick look into the page to find the information that we find difficulties when we have to focus in long and ancient text. This is the reason why many books came with some notes attached to the page we are reading to  give us a better understanding of those twist and unfamiliar words.

In the case of Othello’s play we find many unfamiliar words because of the time period, the beautification of the language, or meanings that simply had changed. Also we can find some twist in the syntax of the phrases.

Some of this words are obvious while reading the text even though we do not use them nowadays. A good example it is “certes”(1.1.17), meaning certainly. On the contrary some of them are completely unfamiliar because of the time period that we have to take a look to the notes to understand their meaning as “Sblood” (1.1.4), the christ blood , or “Forsooth” (1.1.20), as in truth.

Then we have the ones that are unfamiliar because of the beautification of the language, we still using them but with another meaning. It is well shown in the case of “circumstance” (1.1.14) that does not have the meaning of a condition related with and event, in this case means ceremonious talk. This one it is the most problematic one because it can lead you to a wrong conclusion or a wrong thought, and you might get lost along the way.

Another confused change that Shakespeare made it is in the syntax of the sentences. He alters the position of the subject and the verb as in the case of  “says he”(1.1.17)  Since I am from Spain, with a romance language, I can well notice this twists and understand right away what he is trying to say; because in the romance poetic language it is a resource widely used to beautify the sound and the story telling.  For those who ignore this languages it is a hard and confused task that they have to make while reading that might get them confused of who was the subject making the action.