Haiku such as "kyo" () may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single "on" (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese. In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. Shorter haiku are very much more common in 21st century English haiku writing. Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximate the duration of 17 Japanese "on". Also in translations four lines is more appropriate for
Japanese pitch accent that of Kōchi in Shikoku. Japanese pitch accent also varies in how it interacts with syllables and morae. Kagoshima is a purely syllabic dialect, while Osaka is moraic. For example, the low-tone unaccented noun "shimbun" 'newspaper' is in Kagoshima, with the high tone spread across the entire final syllable "bun," but in Osaka it is , with the high tone restricted to the final mora "n". In Tokyo, accent placement is constrained by the syllable, though the downstep occurs between the morae of that syllable. That is, a stressed syllable in Tokyo dialect, as in "kai" 'shell' or "san" 'divining