I’m working my way through some Greek colloquies by Demetrios Darvaris.
At most moments I can make out the font. Other times I am confounded. After some meditation I realized that this is καί.
This is a larger issue I have with reading humanist texts in Greek, e.g. this monolingual Greek dictionary. I know that handy lists of ligatures exist (like this) but I still really have trouble reading these texts. From their frequency on this board, I take it several others have learned to read them. I guess my question is – how? I’m eager to learn; these are excellent pedagogical materials, and the times I’ve managed to decode them I use them with students, to great effect.