All translators have imposed upon themselves a similar lipogrammatic constraint to the original, avoiding the most commonly used letter of the alphabet. This precludes the use of words normally considered essential such as ("I"), ("and"), and (masculine "the") in French, as well as "me", "be", and "the" in English. The Spanish version contains no "a", which is the second most commonly used letter in the Spanish language (first being "e"), while the Russian version contains no о. The Japanese version does not use syllables containing the sound "i" (, , , etc.) at all.