Fjalori I Gjuhes Shqipe Me Zanore -

A language without vowels is a skeleton. But a language with vowels sings. And the Albanian language, old as the eagles and stubborn as the mountains, was meant to sing. Moral of the story: Never swallow your vowels. They are the heartbeats between the consonants — the breath that turns a word into a living thing.

Arben took the book to the main square of Tirana. He opened it to the letter , the schwa — the most humble and most Albanian of vowels, the one foreigners cannot hear. He whispered its sound: uh . Fjalori I Gjuhes Shqipe Me Zanore

The first entry: The breath of wonder when you first see the sea. A language without vowels is a skeleton

His colleagues laughed. “A dictionary always has vowels,” they said. “What nonsense is this?” Moral of the story: Never swallow your vowels

One rainy autumn, Arben finished his dictionary. It was not a thick book of dry definitions. It was a slender volume with a leather cover the color of honey. Every entry was written in gold ink, and next to each word, the vowels were drawn as little birds, fish, or open mouths.

The soul of the language — the musicality of a , e , ë , i , o , u , y — was fading.

The last entry: (star). The vowel that sounds like no other, the tight, bright point of light in the throat.