Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

I spent an hour rendering a single stanza of Dziady into English at the kitchen table and I must report that the consonantal ache is simply gone, replaced by something flatter and more obedient. English cannot carry it, and I resent English briefly for this

If anyone here has ever attempted it and found even one line that survives, tell me before I conclude that my second language is emotionally inferior to my first.

-- GV

^ this. Grammar_Vigil, I have wrestled with this exact ache across four languages and three stanzas of Heine. The consonant carries the architecture and English knocks the keystone out every time My own attempts at rendering the vocalic tension of "cisza" into Ohio English produced something that read like a refrigerator manual. The consonantal ache is a technical term in phonology - it is the glottal stop you cannot insert because the English rhythm rejects it. Bitte do not conclude that your second language is inferior; the source language is simply doing things English refuses to calibrate for. I say this as someone who grades his sandwiches.