Haiku the colloquialism of the language and is closest to natural conversational rhythm, necessary to carry the weight of the hokku A haiku traditionally contains a "kigo", a word or phrase that symbolizes or implies the season of the poem and which is drawn from a "saijiki", an extensive but prescriptive list of such words. Kigo are often in the form of metonyms and can be difficult for those who lack Japanese cultural references to spot. The Bashō examples below include "kawazu", "frog" implying spring, and "shigure", a rain shower in late autumn or early winter. Kigo are not always included
Japanese consonant and vowel verbs verbs ended in "-hu," which is still seen on occasion in historical kana usage, and thus unambiguously ended in "h". The terms "consonant-stem" and "vowel-stem" come from considering the invariant part of the verb (the verb stem) on the basis of phonemes – concretely, by writing in rōmaji. This is an abstract perspective, as the consonant stem itself never occurs independently, but only with a following vowel, as Japanese words are formed of morae – concretely, writing in kana. For example, while the stem of "yomu" is "yom-," the bare *"yom" is not an independent word. The standard Japanese terms,