At the kitchen table, Jason reminded me, “It’s our wedding. I think you can say whatever you want, in any language.”
But who decides what’s common knowledge?
To interact with French people is to hear endless suggestions for improvement.
With friends and family, one says “ti voglio bene”—literally “I want good for you.” And I believe love is not only something you feel, but something you do.
You can’t go bigger than “te amo.” No one says “te amo mucho,” because love is already very much.
The tidy linearity we’re used to leaves little room for revolution.
If one loved in the Indian provinces, one could only love in English, with “I love you.”
But was there a better way to put these pronunciations on the page?
If poetry is an act of discovery for a writer, then even a computational poem has to uncover something new.
A daughter who is jia 嫁 is out of the house is gone forever, water poured out of a bucket, never whole, never yours again.