Talk:On (Japanese prosody)

it often happens that the syllable count and the on count match in Japanese-language haiku

This is highly obscure. There is no such thing as a 'syllable count' in Japanese.

What do you mean? Japanese, like all languages, does have syllables, and they are rather easily counted compared to other languages (Japanese writing has been sticking to syllabaries for good reason). palpalpalpal (talk) 14:42, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Opaque

This article is completely opaque. It is trying so hard not to say the wrong thing that it fails to say anything clearly. I have read it several times and I still do not know: WHAT IS AN ON? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.108.136.100 (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Hear, hear!

Onji

In the Playsation 2 game Shinobido, Onji is the name of a character.

He is a cat.

Archaisms

There are two references for on being an archaism, one is broken and the other contradicts the statement. It says that on is current, as is ji but that onji is not. Tesspub (talk) 09:53, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree the article is somewhat contradictory. The first ref you refer to was never online, so I've deleted its link to the periodical's web presence. I've added a further ref at the end. Do you want to try and make sense of them all? --Yumegusa (talk) 10:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I've had a crack at it!

I'm still confused by "Since then, the term has become obsolete in Japan.." Does that refer to on or onji? --Alobodig (talk) 12:19, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Where?

The article refers to "onji" being used in discussion of English-language haiku but I have not been able to find any British references. I am getting the impression that the term is not known outside North America. Certainly I (a Brit) had never heard the word until coming across it here; "morae" yes, "onji" no. Tesspub (talk) 19:52, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Well I'm unamerican and I've been aware of the term for some time. Here you'll find an article that appeared a couple of years back in Blithe Spirit (UK haiku mag). Here is Alan Summers (UK poet) referring to onji. Here John Carley (British renku theorist) refers to onji (albeit with tongue in cheek). A search on google.fr and google.de will confirm its use is not restricted to English-language haiku either. --Yumegusa (talk) 21:26, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting that The Disjunctive Butterfly uses "imagistically" to mean (I think!) pertaining to imagery. Tesspub (talk) 23:22, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Rename?

I think this article should be renamed "Hyōon moji", reworded to de-emphasise "onji" and a redirect created from "Onji". (I have no idea how to the rename or the redirect) Tesspub (talk) 23:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I understand your thinking, but see WP:TITLE:

the ideal title is:

• Recognizable – Using names and terms commonly used in reliable sources, and so likely to be recognized, for the topic of the article.

Can you make a case in spite of this? --Yumegusa (talk) 00:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Probably not. Mind you, I wasn't familiar with onji either! Tesspub (talk) 12:23, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

This page is not merely the "onji" page, it is also the (redirect) page for "on" (primarily in the discussion of poetry). It makes much more sense to redirect "on" to "onji" than to redirect the opposite direction, since "on" is such a ubiquitous word in English that putting a top-level page for the Japanese meaning would be confusing. Geoffrey.landis (talk) 21:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Redirects can be redirected, so that's not an argument against renaming this article. As far as I can see, no-one was suggesting renaming it on (which is, and will remain, a disambiguation page). In principle it could be renamed to On (poetry) (analogous to Waka (poetry)), but I see no case for it. --Yumegusa (talk) 22:53, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been nagged by fellow haiku enthusiasts to make just this change - so I have. I think it helps reduce the general level of ignorance by a tiny smidgeon. Tesspub (talk) 12:37, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Digraphs

Yumegusa, I think your edit has introduced (or maybe revealed) some ambiguity. Most hiragana are represented by single symbols. Some are represented by two symbols (the second being slightly smaller); these are known as digraphs. The point I was trying to make was the one digraph = one onji, not two as you might otherwise think. As it's now phrased (and perhaps as it was phrased previously) it seems to imply that all hiragana are digraphs. Tesspub (talk) 10:41, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't mean it to mean that, but I see what you mean. Thanks for editing that out. --Yumegusa (talk) 12:41, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Also speaking of digraphs would there be some kind of coherent way to explain that little-tsu does count as an on, while little-yo does not? So like if you're counting characters it's not immediately obvious why ni-p-po-n (four characters) is four on, while to-o-kyo-o (five characters) is also four on? 2601:1C0:8800:FEA0:A0D7:1A5B:17CA:2C65 (talk) 19:37, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

It strikes me as less important to this article (which is primarily about classical Japanese poetry wherein "today" is not きょう but けふ and "win and..." was not かって but かちて) than it would be in an article on contemporary Japanese phonetics. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:38, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Gilbert and Yoneoka originally wrote "bizzare" ?

Or the then editor misspelt "bizarre" ? ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 06:26, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure that they did not write "bizzare" nor "bizarre". Double quotations are improper. See their PDF p.35/37 note [21]. ஒலிசிந்நெக் (talk) 08:28, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

1 mora in a syllable

As a linguist, I am confused by the explanation, especially the final part where an English example is given. In Linguistics, a mora is the central unit of sound in a syllable (it may be the only sound too) to which an onset (opening sounds) or coda (ending sounds) are added.

So, to say that "Give me strength" has more than 3 morae is a bit odd, to me...I mean, it has three: /I/ in GIVE, /i/ in ME and the diphthong /ej/ in STRENGTH. There are no other syllables in that sentence to have any other morae.

So, I think we could be dealing with a situation of terminology in Haiku not matching terminology in linguistics. If there is some other unit of measurement at work here, such as syllable timing, perhaps we should find another term in English to use. Mora is certainly not it. 71.57.186.90 (talk) 01:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)Tom in Florida

correct concept, incorrect English example

I think the issue here is not that mora is the wrong concept to explain weight counting in haiku. It is correct. If a syllable contains two morae, it counts as two on. The problem is that the English sentence "Give me strength" doesn't illustrate multimoraic syllables. Languages such as Czech (with which I'm familiar) have long vowels that take up 2 'weight units.' (same vowel quality, but obviously longer vocalication of the vowel).

The best way to demonstrate this would be an example haiku that has 17 on but fewer syllables. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.29.108 (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, a Japanese example would be welcome. palpalpalpal (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Japanese term for morae

The sentence "Known as "morae" to English-speaking linguists, the modern Japanese term for the linguistic concept is hyōon moji (表音文字).[1]" is incorrect. The Japanese terms for "mora" are haku (拍) and mōra (モーラ), certainly not hyōon moji (表音文字), as can be seen on the Japanese Wiki pages on the subject. This strange claim about linguistics terminology cites only a haiku website which mentions neither the words "morae" nor "hyōon moji" and isn't even related to linguistics! For this reason, I've edited the article and added the proper translations. Snailplane (talk) 10:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Did the wording get mixed up here?

In the article, the following is stated:

"Tōkyō includes two long vowels, which contribute two on each in Japanese but only one syllable each in English, which does not distinguish long vowels from short; meanwhile kyō is perceived by Japanese speakers to be a single sound but in this context is perceived by English speakers as two syllables."

This has me very confused. As a native English speaker, I'm pretty sure that I would interpret kyō to be only one syllable instead of two syllables since English does not have mora timing or a distinction between short and long vowels. At the same time, the information in the rest of the article suggests that a Japanese speaker would interpret kyō to be two sounds instead of one since it has a long vowel instead of a short vowel. I could be mistaken though since I am still new to Japanese. Voluntari Tau (talk) 14:54, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I assume perceived by English speakers as two syllables is talking about how /kj/ is not a well-formed onset in English unless followed by /uː/ or /ʊ/, with the result that Kyoto is usually pronounced with three syllables, /kiˈoʊ.toʊ/, in English, but in Tokyo it occurs in the middle of a word so it can be pronounced as a cluster, i.e. /ˈtoʊk.joʊ/. The entire paragraph is unsourced and reeks of OR (kyō definitely constitute two moras), so I've removed it. Nardog (talk) 12:41, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

"Tokyo" and "Kyoto" are almost always pronounced as three syllables each in English, except by people who also speak Japanese. I think the paragraph was generally accurate except that "Tokyo" was a poorly chosen example since it has a common English pronunciation that differs from how the paragraph's author assumed most English-speakers would normally perceive words containing a hiragana きょう (as opposed to きょ). Would either of you be opposed to switching "Tokyo" out for another example like any of the people listed at Kyōsuke? Or better yet, something like Rashomon (three syllables in English, but definitely five on)? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Kyōsuke and Rashomon both sound like ideal examples. And it is likely correct that the paragraph's confusion stemmed in part from the anglicized pronunciations that are commonly used in English. Voluntari Tau (talk) 14:25, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

• @Nardog: You are right about the use of the word "sound" rather than "syllable" -- out of an entire paragraph with two small errors, I missed one. Would you mind me asking, though, how you came across this article? You don't seem to have expressed any interest in classical Japanese poetry until two weeks ago (given another somewhat suspicious event that happened at around the same time, I am ... somewhat suspicious of your sudden involvement in this page); but more importantly you seem to be continuously interpreting this as an article on phonetics/phonology (i.e., linguistics) rather than an article on poetic theory. The major problem with the paragraph (and the table) is that it relies on unrealistic examples (contemporary place names, mostly of Chinese origin) that seem to have been selected because of their having been widely "heard of" outside Japan, but your edits (both article blankings and your above comment) seem to be ignoring that issue in favour bringing the article more in line with a field of study that is only loosely related to this one, and you don't even seem to be aware that you are doing so. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:26, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

BTW, even from a linguistic standpoint I'm 99.9% certain that you are wrong to say 'kyō' is definitely not "perceived by Japanese speakers to be a single ... syllable. See for example Bjarke Frellesvig's 2010 A History of the Japanese Language p.169 (Through the onbin sound changes..., Japanese ... acquired long syllables which included bound moras) and p.185 (EMJ and later stages of Japanese ... [introduced] the distinction between metrically short (or light) and long (or heavy) syllables) and onward (a series of diagrams mapping the EMJ words tauto- 尊- and punde 筆, both of which are marked as consisting of two syllables, one long and one short). You wouldn't be working based on the assumption that the y in Tokyo is pronounced in Japanese as a separate vowel as it conventionally is in English? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)