Haiku the 5-7-5 pattern. Although the word ""on"" is sometimes translated as "syllable", one "on" is counted for a short syllable, two for an elongated vowel or doubled consonant, and one for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun", though counted as two syllables in English, is counted as four "on" in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n); and the word ""on"" itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises two "on": the short vowel o and the . This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17 "on" but only 15 syllables. Conversely, some sounds,
On (Japanese prosody) transliterated into hiragana. In cases where a hiragana is represented by a pair of symbols each pair (or "digraph" e.g. "kyo" (きょ)) equates to a single "on". When viewed this way, the term ""ji"" ("character") is used in Japanese. In English-language discussions of Japanese poetry, the more familiar word "syllable" is sometimes used. Although the use of "syllable" is inaccurate, it often happens that the syllable count and the "on" count match in Japanese-language haiku. The disjunction between syllables and "on" becomes clearer when counting sounds in English-language versions of Japanese poetic forms, such as haiku in English. An English