Python (xml.etree) not reading XML text

I've not worked with XML before, but am having trouble with getting text out of the following XML:

<w>
  <shortening>n</shortening>
  ūmi 
  <mor type="mor">
    <mw>
      [extra stuff]
    </mw>
    <menx>rest</menx>
    <menx>sleep</menx>
    <gra type="gra" relation="ROOT" head="0" index="1"/>
  </mor>
</w>

It doesn't recognise the text ūmi inside. I think this is because it is preceded by the <shortening> tag. This shouldn't be a Unicode issue, because there are plenty of other Unicode characters that read just fine (this is transliterated Hebrew).

Is there an easy way to fix this? Is this malformed XML?