[Discussion] Personal Haiku Method: Vowel Strength

So recently, I was looking into Japanese poetry. As many of you probably already know, the Japanese themselves do haiku based on On, which means "sound." For the purposes of haiku, it is often rendered as "syllable." Further delving into what many of you know, some view the rendering as "syllable" to be inaccurate, with the consequence that English haiku can to sound too long to the Japanese ear, which is a problem because brevity is a key feature of haiku. Essentially, 17 On take less time to say than 17 syllables.

Some have also pointed out that a better translation of On would be mora, and English haiku based on that should probably be about 12 syllables in length, matching the time frame of Japanese haiku better. Morae are difficult to break up in English, however. We tend to run our consonants together (as in "burnt"), but in Japan they tend to parse their consonants out more (which might result in "burunto"). Given these challenges, I developed a method that tries to preserve the phonetics of English speech while fitting into the timing of Japanese haiku.

I preserve the 5-7-5 scheme of haiku, for one, so there is still the goal of shooting for a total of 17. I do the count, however, based on vowel strength in each line, an idea I got from the fact that some vowels are considered to have less morae than others (if they are short vs. long/dipthongs). Weak vowels get a value of 1. Strong vowels get a value of 2. These values are added and totaled for each line. For example, a 5 line might look like: "weak, weak, strong, weak" (1, 1, 2, 1). A 7 line might look like: "strong, weak, strong, weak, weak." (2, 1, 2, 1, 1).

How do I determine the strength of a vowel? Well, this is arbitrary. It's based on what vowels I think are strong or weak, and I am still making my mind up a bit on classification. Here is how I do it so far:

Weak

• a, as in and
• e, as in desk
• i, as in pin
• o, as in dog
• u, as in put or book
• ə, the sound in alive or under

Strong

• A, as in ate
• E, as in evil
• I, as in light
• O, as home
• U, as in lute or boot
• OI, as in toil
• OW, tower

You can see an example I wrote here.

This method will average around 12 syllables each time. I think it accomplishes what I set out to do. What are your thoughts on my alternative method of haiku?