Got to love latin based words, right? Thanks so much for your insightful and dare I say entertaining take on the correct form of haiku. It was very instructive!
Thank you for the correction. I wouldn't have known, but I respect educators even more after they correct themselves. Also I learned so much from this video. I thought that there just wasn't "stressed" syllables in Japanese, so I try to keep my English haikus as even as possible. I've never heard of mora before, thank you so much!
Thank you so much for this. I learned so much. I write poetry and have written many Haiku. The idea that "the rules" of 5, 7, 5, don't have to be followed so strictly is freeing. Thank you.
I finally "get" the haiku! All this time, I never understood what the beauty of that sort of poem was. Now I get it. It's about rhythm, something never taught to me, and when you did something so simple as GIVE that rhythm in the most basic way, it clicked. Imagine if as kids we'd been taught what a limerick is without ever going into their rhythm. It'd just be some weird bunch of words. So thank you again.
I've been thinking English haiku sound weird for years and this video finally put it into words. Bless. The cow haiku is great it's basically the first time I've heard an English haiku that gets the rhythm right.
As both a poet and a student of the Japanese language, this video is very interesting to me. I'm inspired to do some more homework and learn to write a proper haiku of my own. Neat video, earned sub for sure.
In English, proper haiku is always 5-7-5, no matter what anyone says. There are egotistical losers with little talent who always want to break the rules, who destroy, rather than create. Don't listen to them or you will never, ever gey anywhere with your poetry.
@James Ritchie I think the English "syllabic" interpretation of haiku miss the point or nature of the original. That's what artistic licensing is anyway, I guess. You can take some liberties :)
@@jamesaritchie1 This is a really goofy way of looking at it, and Kent did a wonderful job of explaining why this fixation on syllables is a disservice. Or do you think that that refrigerator poem is actually a good haiku?
Love this!....I wonder if you read an article I co-authored 20 years ago "From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8: An Investigation of Japanese Haiku Metrics and Implications for English Haiku". It's lovely to see our theory at work!
Hi! I think I must have - it’s been a while since I wrote the script for the video, but I looked up the paper and the information in there is very familiar, if not, what I remember referencing in making the video! Thank you for your theory and work!
This was a revelation. I could add a dozen exclamation points. Dare I say that I felt so much missing from my understanding of haiku, and your analysis both confirmed what I felt was missing and then went so far beyond...Thank you so very much. I'll be listening to this again and again for some time to come.
Part of the fundamental issue here is that the rules are very specific and very tied to Japanese. Trying to bring them to English, or really any other language, is going to necessitate some changes. The Lawson example is questionable as you've still got the same number of syllables, there's just an extra non-syllable sound in the middle. It's a bit like if you over enunciate a word making it longer, it would still have the same number of syllables, even if you choose to increase the time you take on part of it. A good example would be like many Southern dialects of English where the vowel sounds get dragged out, there's still the same number of syllables, it's just that it's much more obvious when you're dealing with dipthongs. There's also the issue of Japanese haiku being originally intended as the beginning of a longer poem and there's a bunch of rules that really only make sense if you're intending to continue the pattern for more lines. If you don't get the break and the rest of it, it kind of screws up the rest of the poem structure.
I really appreciate you explaination of Rhythem. I have been writing Haiku since the the early 90's. I've always argued that the 5-7-5 isn't nearly as important as "the twist or surprise" The rains of summer join together. / How swift it is / Mogami River. He's talking about the rains that fall and fall. They're swift (What? falling hard? they fall again and again and again?) No, they join into a quickly moving river. And there is the turn, the Surprise. In my mind the initial image, be it season, or feeling (ma) and then the Turn or surprise are the most important features of the Haiku. If you get those two things right, well, who will argue with you about the rest. I look forward to focusing on the stressed words in english, we'll see how that goes. Thank you again.
If you ever talk about Japanese poetry again, maybe you could include senryu? I didn't know about the difference between haiku and senryu until about 15 years after I lived in Japan....
Oh I am a great fan of senryu - have been for decades - there is even a really cute anime "Senryuu Shoujo" where senryu in a way is sort of the main character :D
This was very instructive. Of course, the thesis is deliberately provocative. What we English users have done is to adapt a foreign form to our language and culture. Something the Japanese have themselves mastered better than all others. It does not make it wrong-merely adapted or partially absorbed into a different cultural blotter.
This video is from 2020, but the way it's shot and edited gives me very strong 2014-2015 nostalgia. It's also very informative, clear and to the point. Great video man! Took me back and learned a lot along the way too!
Super interesting, and as a big fan of the Haiku form who sadly does not speak or read Japanese, this was really illuminating. I always had a feeling that the form was both less strict and also differently-defined than I'd been led to believe. So thanks! A quick note--more for viewers than for you, since you pretty clearly are already aware of this--regarding your mention (around 1:20) of English being "a stress timed or syllable timed language": this is misleading. It's stress timed, not syllable timed. In syllable-timed languages, each syllable is given equal time (and thus unstressed sounds tend to be less reduced), in stress-timed languages the stressed syllables are what is given roughly equal time (meaning a big reduction in unstressed sounds). You demonstrated this with your riff on cows and grass, of course. This is one of the most difficult things for learners to master about English, in my experience, and those who can do it will always sound more natural, even with an accent, than those who can't, though their accent might be less pronounced. In case anybody has read this far and is mentally composing a rebuttal: Yes, while there is something of a spectrum between the two (French is more stress timed than Spanish, which is more stress timed than Italian, but they're all basically syllable timed languages), English is very far toward the stress-timed end of things (more so than German, for instance). Other examples of stress-timed languages are Arabic and Russian. Interestingly, while Cantonese is strongly syllable-timed, Mandarin is somewhere near the middle the two extremes of stress- and syllable-timed (though it's nearer to the latter). The existence of a spectrum doesn't eliminate the usefulness of categories. So we might say that languages like Italian, which adhere to a very rigid syllable-timed scheme, lend themselves more easily to Haiku than others, like English or German. I think this is both right and wrong. Obviously if we're mainly concerned with rhythm and meter, then yes--but then again, as you point out (the cow thing again), scansion is a thing in all languages, and while some English poetry (nearly all of Shakespeare, for instance) scans, practically no utterances in the spoken language do. On the other hand, when you think of the fact that Italian has both a very regular syllable-timing structure and also a very limited range of word endings, it makes Dante's accomplishments seem a bit less impressive. Kidding--he's the fucking master. On the other hand, as you point out, the rhythmic structure is only a part of what haiku is really all about, and arguably not the most important part. Still, I think "stick to this syllable pattern" is useful because it will constrain people and make them work a little harder. For the same reason, I value constraint in the creation of pretty much all art (rhythmic structure, musical scales, representationalism in painting for the most part, etc): I feel that it forces the artist to work a bit harder and thus have a better chance of capturing that elusive moment of truth.
What makes this video especially good is its emphasis on the typical objective of haiku. As a classical musician, I learned that genres and forms are not fixed standards but sets of generalizations against which the best composers were constantly pushing and pulling. However, the explanation of the technical issue was also very clear and made me conscious of what I noticed subconsciously about the way Japanese people often read haiku aloud, the pause between the first two lines significantly longer than the pause between the second and third lines. If anything, I want to add to it, because (especially with Kento's accent of English) there's another fundamental difference between the languages which is difficult to reconcile to the genre of haiku: the flow of the language. English is Germanic not only in its emphasis of stress over mora, but also in its choppy, erratic cadence and its abundance of consonants. It struggles to flow. The mora of Japanese flow like oil, smoother even than Italian or Spanish for lack of terminal consonants, and English can achieve some flow if the poet is masterful but it's quite difficult. By direct consequence, the flow of Japanese mora are like a quiet brook, inviting the listener into 間, whereas English will at best struggle awkwardly to achieve the same effect, especially by the same means. No, it is easier for English to aim for a comparable sense of quiet and space in its own way, inventing a different rhythm more natural to itself. The quiet and space will be different than what Japanese creates, but it can succeed on its own terms in its own right. And then we can talk about the very purpose of haiku, because any form or genre can and will be radically repurposed (take, for example, the haiku written to crack up the poor players of the batsu game where they aren't allowed to laugh in school - many of you remember what I'm referring to). I could have written a tanka (one subtype of haiku with a standard 5-line structure) to demonstrate my bit about flow of syllables by using smooth syllables for the first three lines and percussive, choppy syllables for the last two (or vice versa); if I really wanted to push the point I could use Japanese for the smooth section and English for the rough. There's no hard rule requiring a poem to be composed entirely of one language (only the reality that the flavour of fluently multilingual compositions is fully accessible to very few people). See, genre and form can be defied and bent in ways you didn't even conceive of, so of course purpose is not exempt from the manipulations of clever creatives.
Any rules that you try to apply for poetry in one language are likely to break in another. Latin poems have basically no rhyming because rhymes are pretty much everywhere in the language due to the massive amount of conjugation and declension involved in the language, there are somewhere between few and no words that don't rhyme in Latin, so only hacks would use rhyming to create a poem. So, they did a lot with meter when writing poems and basically nothing with rhyme.
@@SmallSpoonBrigadewoooow! I’m just now about 8/9 months into learning Spanish and this makes so much sense! Obviously not all poems in English rhyme either, but it’s one of the most common ways a novice would recognize a writing piece as poetry. But I’ve never thought about how the rhyming would mean nothing in Spanish and other Latin languages since their sentences probably end up rhyming ALL the time anyways! Amazing!
This is a pretty late comment, for some reason this video just showed up on my recommended, but I think English can fit the original rhythmic pattern if you follow a sort of iambic meter, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables in a 3-4-3 pattern. For instance: The snow lay on the ground, The stars are shining in the sky, Winter warms the heart.
What is a dog? A dog is a pet. -Conversation i made up 4(2)-5(2)-7(2) The numbers outside the brackets are the syllables~, and the ones inside are the silent beats. The break at the end isn’t said but helps to keep the rhythm if followed by another Haiku.
Great video! Really enjoyed the topics you explored regarding the similarities/differences between the Japanese and English languages as well as the culture surrounding that relationship.
Fantastic video, great work! One addendum to consider is that when a new compound word is created, such as English Haiku, a new set of modified rules would be logical to consider as part of the new definitive expectation.
Wow, thank you for this! Since I learned about haikus in maybe 3rd grade, I’ve never understood them. For years I’ve literally thought “no offense to Japanese culture, but what is the point in haikus?” 😂 So finally about 18 years later I’ve decided to come to RU-vid to see if someone could explain haikus in a way that I would appreciate them, maybe even hear one that resonated with me. I searched “what is a haiku?” And chose your video first, as the title made me hopeful lol. And I love everything about this video! The mora-syllable adjustment just does not translate well, and I was never taught that rhythm had anything to do with it in school. So truly, a thought (usually about nature) conveyed in a 5-7-5 syllable structure just did not sound like poetry to me. I got an A on a poem as silly as your cow and refrigerator one, it was literally about Daylight Saving Time! Anyways my eyes have been opened, despite feeling a little skeptical that I would feel any differently about haikus after doing the research. Also, I love the one you shared of the lonely man. Now understanding the rhythm aspect of a haiku, I can hear the silence after he says he is alone. Incredible!
@@kentonyc I never check my notifications, but I’m glad I made your day! Thank you for sharing your knowledge, I hope some school teachers see this video lol 😂
This makes so much sense. Even with closely related languages, usually poetic forms need to be adapted to match the melody of languages. Just like how sonnets in English have 5 iambic feet per verse and are 4+4+4+2, VS sonnets in Spanish that have 11 syllables per verse and are 4+4+3+3, and even Italian uses a different rhyme scheme than Spanish. Each form doesn't adapt to the other one because each language is different, and so the parameters need to be loosened up a bit. This makes haikus so much more interesting than I was thought. This simple definition even made me think they weren't that special.
surprised how small this creator is even though with all his work it's really crazy i found this channel today through a lesson in my 9th grade english class
Thank you for the clear explanation! I had been screaming internally "No! Something is wrong!" all these years every time I heared the English explanation of 俳句.
My favorite haiku is probably this one by Kobayashi Issa: 露の世は露の世ながらさりながら. If you know the story behind it, it just rips your soul apart. English translation is often rendered as: "This world is but a dewdrop world, and yet, oh and yet!"
No one is right when it comes to haiku. The message in the haiku is more important. Than the poems word or syllable count. The use of kigo and kireji are the most important aspects of a haiku not the syllable count.
This is so deeply informative and helpful! I have a question about the one English haiku example provided ("Cows eat grass all the time..."), which I totally realize is probably a somewhat hasty example that also is trying to give a "feel" for Japanese moraic structure on top of English-language rhythm and so is bound to be imperfect. Anyway, the question is, if you feel STRESS is the better way for an English speaker to think of haiku structure, how is the stress falling in that example poem? Here's my natural take: (I'll use ALL CAPS to represent stress): *COWS EAT GRASS ALL the TIME (6 syllables but 5 stresses). *SO MUCH GRASS, THE GRASS is ALL GONE (8 syllables but 7 stresses). Obviously, this fits your "5-7-5 stresses" reinterpretation. What I'm noticing though is that "the" is considered unstressed in the first line but stressed in the second line. This suggests there's an even DEEPER level to English stress rules that is frankly bamboozling. Sometimes function words are stressed as if they are content words! I think my big takeaway here might just be that English is teeming with complications and the more an English speaker learns about other languages like Japanese, the more they are exposed to how weird ENGLISH is!😵💫
Also, it is convenient to use single-syllable words, as you did in the example poem. But when I try to use any multiple-syllable words, the whole project seems to break down!
Alone in my room Watching this youtube content Procrastinating But seriously, tho, thank you so much. I have been fascinated with haiku but never really noticed the linguistic difference, and you pointed it out so concisely.
Nice video and excellent explanation. Do Japanese put musical rhythm to their Haikus or is it just poetry with Mora restricted parameters? If the later, then the rhythmic sound can't be a valid argument because linguistically English and Japanese differ. Therefore a separate paradigm must be create for the environment it is created. So we can call this, as a different commenter mentioned, a Western Haiku construction. Similar to Brazilian Jiujitsu, it creates it's own style within the environment it is introduce. Like Japanese style pasta and pizza (which I love!), they are fundamentally wrong, but oh so good!
They do put it on rhythm, if you look up some haikus being read out loud on RU-vid, you will find examples of the rhythm being emphasized. That said, I am a supporter of a “western construction” - language and art is all meant to be reinterpreted, reconstructed, and shared across cultures in my view. When I say “How You Learned Haikus Wrong” there are huge air quotes around “Wrong” for sure.
@@kentonyc , thanks for replying. You're absolutely right regarding art & language. I do hear a rhythmic sound in the readings, which I think the Mora arrangement makes easier to do than with English. Might be an interesting challenge to try to add that rhythmic element into the Western variety.
Thanks for stopping by! I would just have to say the simplicity of the 5-7-5 rule did probably help with the popularity of English haiku so I'm happy it does exist, but yeah, I think it slightly over-simplifies things!
Very many thanks for this. It's helped my appreciation of Haiku enormously. FYI though, I find the PiP inserts very distracting and a barrier to my understanding. Why not assume that your viewer is coming to you for knowledge, not for entertainment?
Very interesting, thank you. One quirk of this formulation is that there are 3 morae beats between the 1st and 2nd lines, whereas the 3rd line follows the 2nd almost immediately. Is that standard in Japanese haiku? I had hard a similar formulation years ago, but I had remembered it as in 2/2 time, with the first line starting on the first downbeat of ms 1, the second line on the last upbeat of ms 4, and the last line on the first downbeat of ms 10.
Oh now I understand. I was reading the English translation of "Four Haiku" by Basho. I was counting it using the 5/7/5 syllables and was wondering why was it not 575. Was this because the translation of Bownas & Thwaite was using 5/7/5 morae?
Depression I came here, looked down Contemplated the abyss Decided to live. - Larissa de Abreu ++++++++++ Comfort in the rain When I feel alone, I find comfort in the rain. The cold warms my heart. - Larissa de Abreu
I loved your cow poem. Thank you for this wonderful video. It reminded me of my Japanese Culture teachers trying to teach me Haiku from 4th -6th grade when my dad was stationed in Japan.
here comes that boy leaping fences one by one I too so long ago --------------- High above these walls faded flags wave in the wind ghosts of kings reign here
