This article is from the Japanese FAQ, by TANAKA Tomoyuki tanaka@cs.indiana.edu and Olaf Meeuwissen olaf@IMSL.shinshu-u.ac.jp with numerous contributions by others.
--- mora, mora-timing
Japanese words are made up of moras (or morae).
and syllables seem to be of lesser importance.
each mora gets equal time (isochronous moras).
see Robert Port, et al. "Evidence for mora timing in Japanese"
in JASA (Journal of Acoustical Society of America)
Vol 81, No 5, pp.1574-1585 (1987).
--- tones, H and L
most gairaigo words and end with the tones ...HHHLL
(and if longer than 3 moras begin with the tones LH).
--- 2-mora foot, 4-beat rhythm, stupidity of 5-7-5 haiku in English
2 moras constitutes a "foot" in Jp.
(example: in abbreviation/inversion
san | gura | su --> gura | san
2 moras move together. many examples like this.)
these 2-mora feet combine to form a 4-beat rhythm, the
basic rhythm/prosody of spoken Japanese.
the "7-5 chou" on the surface is really this 4-beat rhythm.
see Bekku Sadanori [book] "nihongo no rizumu" (1977).
so i say,
Haiku in English:
it's cute when children do it;
stupid for grown-ups.
(by TT)
as you can see, rhythmically 5-7-5 means nothing in English.
serious translators of haikus into English ignore 5-7-5.
--- Japanese spoken by gaijin tend to be 3-beat?
i was looking at "Chapter 4: stupidity of English haikus"
in Bekku's book (listed above) and found this:
Japanese spoken by English-speakers tend to be 3-beat.
examples:
yoko | HA: | ma kama | KU: | ra o: | FU: | na kama | KA: | zee carry | O: | key tokoro | ZA: | wa
 
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