Frogs On Drugs

[Magpie]

ancient pond...
frog
on drugs

[Erthona]

Meth baby, meth!

AR, if you wish to be more impact, you could remove the "on". Then you are basically just listing the ingredients. You mix ancient pond+frog+drugs=event. I'm not saying it is right or better, you just might want to write it that way and see how that effects the reading. I also think that leaving the "on" out, it reads more quickly. I think the event supports a quicker reading in the writing, as there is no slowing in the film.

Dale

[ellajam]

I love that we are discussing the fraction of a second that it takes to read the word on, and that it matters.

[rayheinrich]

I love that we are discussing the fraction of a second that it takes to read the word on, and that it matters.

Oh Jaminella, you unlearned soul! Dale was referring to the Japanese phonetic element "on" (or "onji").
He was saying that your "on" wasn't on enough to be an "on" so leave it off.
Which, needless to say, turns me onji.  Right on, Dale!

On-less rewrite:

        old pond
        frog jumps in
        piranha

[ellajam]

I love that we are discussing the fraction of a second that it takes to read the word on, and that it matters.

Oh Jaminella, you unlearned soul! Dale was referring to the Japanese phonetic element "on" (or "onji").
He was saying that your "on" wasn't on enough to be an "on" so leave it off.
Which, needless to say, turns me onji.  Right on, Dale!

On-less rewrite:

        old pond
        frog jumps in
        piranha

Ah, on, thank you, Ray. This is another thing which holds english language at a distance from actual haiku.
I've never had a knack for other languages and am pretty sure I won't be learning Japanese in this lifetime, so it is unlikely I will read haiku. The example in the spoiler just makes me understand less how I could possibly apply this.

The more I learn the less I know.

The term "On" (rarely "Onji") refers to counting phonetic sounds in Japanese poetry. In the Japanese language, the word "on" (音) means "sound". It is used to mean the phonetic units counted in haiku, tanka and other such poetic forms. Known as "morae" to English-speaking linguists, the modern Japanese term for the linguistic concept is either haku (拍) or mōra (モーラ).

Ji (字) is Japanese for "symbol" or "character". The concatenation of the two words "on" and "ji" into "onji" (音字) was used by Meiji era (1868–1912) grammarians to mean "phonic character" and was translated into English by Nishi Amane in 1870 as "letter". Since then, the term "onji" has become obsolete in Japan, and only survives in foreign-language discussion of Japanese poetry. Gilbert and Yoneoka [1] call the use of the word "onji" "bizarre and mistaken". It was taken up after a 1978 letter to Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America decrying the then-current use of the word "jion", which itself appears to have arisen in error.[2][3] The normal Japanese term in the context of counting sounds in poetry is "on".[2]

Counting on in Japanese poetry is the same as counting characters when the text is transliterated into hiragana. In cases where a hiragana is represented by a pair of symbols each pair (or "digraph" e.g. "kyo" (きょ)) equates to a single on. When viewed this way, the term "ji" ("character") is used in Japanese.[2]

In English-language discussions of Japanese poetry, the more familiar word "syllable" is sometimes used. Although the use of "syllable" is inaccurate, it often happens that the syllable count and the on count match in Japanese-language haiku. The disjunction between syllables and on becomes clearer when counting sounds in English-language versions of Japanese poetic forms, such as haiku in English. An English syllable may contain one, two or three morae and, because English word sounds are not readily representable in hiragana, a single syllable may require many more ji to be transliterated into hiragana.

There is disagreement among linguists as to the definitions of "syllable" and "mora".[4] In contrast, ji (and hence on) is unambiguously defined by reference to hiragana.

ExamplesEdit

To illustrate the distinction between on and syllables, the following four words each contain the same number of on, but different numbers of syllables:

Nippon (ni-p-po-n) - 4 on, but 2 syllables
Tokyo (to-u-kyo-u) - 4 on, but 2 syllables
Osaka (o-o-sa-ka) - 4 on, but 3 syllables
Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki) - 4 on, also 4 syllables.[5]
ReferencesEdit

Richard Gilbert and Judy Yoneoka, From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8: An Investigation of Japanese Haiku Metrics and Implications for English Haiku
Richard Gilbert, Stalking the Wild Onji
T. Kondo, "In support of onji rather than jion," Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America, 1:4, 30-31 (1978)
Ellen Broselaw, Skeletal Positions and Moras, in John A Goldsmith (ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 978-0-631-20126-7, p175ff
Peter Howell, John Van Borsel. Multilingual Aspects of Fluency Disorders. Volume 5 of Communication Disorders Across Languages. Multilingual Matters, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84769-358-7 p146
Read in another language.

[rayheinrich]

The more I learn the less I know.  

The secret of happiness is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.

[billy]

meditation
japanese style
on hand clapping

[rayheinrich]

old pond
frog jumps
on

[Erthona]

Yes all of that gibberish you spout is true. However a morae is to fast for a frog. although they can be seen as juxtaposed. It of course is devoid of a kigo, or kireji. I tend to lean to the side that this is a pseudo-haiku, instead of being a actually haiku. However some references related to the form and purpose in Haiku might be beneficial. As the "on" or "morae", have little to do with spoken English, and is actual being phased-out in Japan. That's kind of like Allan's idea of a phrase equals to one breath, but that only gives one a deadbeat, and how is that supposed to be quantified.

"old pond . . .
a frog leaps in
water’s sound"

---Bashō's "old pond"
________________________________
Yoda version

sound water's
in leaps frog
an old poem.

Erthona