: Writing a poem in secondary language that has rules for primary language Haiku is a very short Japanese poem with seventeen syllables and three verses each being of 5,7 and 5 syllables respectively.

Vote Up Vote Down

You use the rules of the language you are writing in, period. Haiku may be written in English, using the English rules and definitions of syllables. Japanese and English Haiku do not translate as Haiku from one language to the other but they can use the same rules in terms of syllable count. Similarly I've heard Chinese and Malaysian limericks written using the native language and the English construction rules, Shakespeare rather famously wrote a number of Sonnets in English, rhyming couplets and puns work in every language and puns can even be made across two different languages.

Short version; use the construction rules that define the thing you want to write and the language rules for whatever you're writing in.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

I don't see how writing an English Haiku is a problem. So you write English words on three lines with line 1 having 5 syllables, line 2 having 7, and line 3 having 5. I remember writing haikus as a kid in elementary school. I'm no linguist, but I'd think any spoken language must have syllables, so the idea of counting syllables should be applicable to almost any language.

Similarly, any spoken language should have the concept of rhyme, so you could write a limerick in any spoken language.

Ditto any poem form that relies on rhyming patterns or syllable counts.

Are their languages whose speakers have never thought of the idea of syllables and/or rhyme?

Something like American Sign Language doesn't have rhyme or syllables, so they have to have entirely different mechanisms for poetry.

Are their other languages that would make applying such rules problematic? I'd be amused to know what languages and why.

Of course translating a poem from one language to another is fundamentally difficult. It would be an astounding coincidence if, say, a word-for-word translation of a poem from English to French rhymed or had any coherent rhythm. But I don't see why you can't take the rules for a form of poetry and apply them to another language.

(0)