Probably even more so to an anglophone. We're used to related modern verbs like choir and chuter, so those more readily come to mind than chier for us.
It's quite true Old French is full of funny sounding things to modern ears though, a great deal because of the different vowels sparking very odd/funny associations to modern words with very different meanings.
El païs ot un damisel
fiz a un cunte, gent e bel.
That one would work in modern French too. though the -te ruins it a bit for us as it makes it sounds more like comte than like con.
Marie de France is especially easy for people from Normandy, Bretagne and for Québécois (read aloud even more. I saw a production of Shakespeare translated to a mix of Middle and Old French many years ago, and most of it was quite intelligible). I was amazed to see it's full of archaic turns and even some words that are still present in regional speech. "Fils à" instead of "Fils de" would be an example of that. Older people might still refer to someone as La Josée à Raymond instead of saying Josée, la fille de Raymond.
Glad to see you enjoyed it. It's really a pity so little is known about her.
They're easier to tell apart when pronounced. One is more like vèr, the other is more like voué-er, or even voué-ar. You can still hear some of the é sound in some regional pronunciations of voir (the veoir spelling disappeared for good only in the 19th century).
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
