03-25-2014, 07:44 PM
Yes, billie's got some good points there.
Like I said, syllables come about sixth on the list, i.e. not that important.
But haiku should be short. And to start with you need to get a feel for their length.
Earlier Billy mentioned:
"Personally I'm of the "if it can be spoken in a normal breath" school of thought.:
And that's MUCH better than counting syllables. Of course, some people have longer
breaths than others. So a good rule of thumb is:
A haiku should take about 3 to 7 seconds to speak out loud in a relaxed (but not slow)
voice using proper pauses at the ends of the lines.
The Basho pond one: (translated by Robert Hass)
old pond
frog jumps into
the sound of water (9.5 syllables using short/medium/long method)
Should take about 5 seconds.
The one Billy mentioned: (using Robert Hass's translation instead of the one Billy used):
first cold shower
even the monkey wants
a coat of straw (11 syllables using short/medium/long method)
Takes about 5 as well.
Yep, much better.
P.S. Some translators use only lower case and few, if any, punctuation marks because written
Japanese has no upper case and very few punctuation marks. (? and ! are expressed
with sentence structure and "." with a space.)
Like I said, syllables come about sixth on the list, i.e. not that important.
But haiku should be short. And to start with you need to get a feel for their length.
Earlier Billy mentioned:
"Personally I'm of the "if it can be spoken in a normal breath" school of thought.:
And that's MUCH better than counting syllables. Of course, some people have longer
breaths than others. So a good rule of thumb is:
A haiku should take about 3 to 7 seconds to speak out loud in a relaxed (but not slow)
voice using proper pauses at the ends of the lines.
The Basho pond one: (translated by Robert Hass)
old pond
frog jumps into
the sound of water (9.5 syllables using short/medium/long method)
Should take about 5 seconds.
The one Billy mentioned: (using Robert Hass's translation instead of the one Billy used):
first cold shower
even the monkey wants
a coat of straw (11 syllables using short/medium/long method)
Takes about 5 as well.
Yep, much better.
P.S. Some translators use only lower case and few, if any, punctuation marks because written
Japanese has no upper case and very few punctuation marks. (? and ! are expressed
with sentence structure and "." with a space.)
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions