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,
Old Japanese line of the first poem in the "Kojiki" was written with five characters: This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds ("ongana") was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the "Man'yōshū" (c. 759). In "man'yōgana", each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any one of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis revealed that 88 syllables were distinguished in the "Kojiki": The system has the same gaps of "yi" and "wu" found in later forms of Japanese. However, many syllables that have