In fact, most haiku in English are not writtten in 5-7-5 syllables at all - many are not even written in three lines. American haiku poet Cor van den Heuvel writes:Ī haiku is not just a pretty picture in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables each. Counting something that does not exist makes no sense.įor the same reason, whatever is written in English and called a "haiku" is not a haiku in the Japanese sense of the word. I would also say, whatever you write in English trying to adhere to this strict definition of on will likely be rejected as not real Haiku readers and critics won't care about such technicalities and will count English syllables, which is apparently what the inventors of Haiku were aiming to do in their own language, capture syllables of the Japanese language.Īn on is a feature of the Japanese language that does not exist in English. Scroll down in the site to get a complete list.īecause it refers to sounds, you might be able to portray the sound of an English word in Hiragana, but not every English sound can be represented in Hiragana.įor example, the words "chick" or "bat" both turn into two syllable words in Hiragana, sounding like "chi-ku" and "ba-ta", because all Hiragana syllables end in a vowel sound. In Hiragana, either one or two glyphs represent a single syllable to be uttered in the Japanese language. ![]() For me, most are close but definitely not sounding like English.Īs your article says, there is no definition of on in English, the number of on can only be computed by converting the sound to Hiragana, and then recognizing (from the Hiragana site) how many on are represented in the Hiragana spelling. You can decide how good it is by listening to the Japanese speaker pronounce the Hiragana. This means it will show you the Hirigana spelling that most closely approximates the sounds of the English word. ![]() ![]() You can try Japanese Transliteration which will take English words and *transliterate them into Hiragana, which you can hear spoken (lower right hand option).
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