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The term "On" (rarely "Onji") refers to counting phonetic sounds in Japanese poetry. In the Japanese language, the word "''on''" (音) means "sound". It is used to mean the phonetic units counted in haiku, tanka, and other such poetic forms. Known as "morae" to English-speaking linguists, the modern Japanese term for the linguistic concept is either ''haku'' (拍) or ''mōra'' (モーラ). Ji (字) is Japanese for "symbol" or "character". The concatenation of the two words ''"on"'' and ''"ji"'' into ''"onji"'' (音字) was used by Meiji era grammarians to mean "phonic character" and was translated into English by Nishi Amane in 1870 as "letter". Since then, the term "onji" has become obsolete in Japan, and only survives in foreign-language discussion of Japanese poetry. Gilbert and Yoneoka call the use of the word ''"onji"'' "bizarre and mistaken". It was taken up after a 1978 letter to ''Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America'' decrying the then-current use of the word "jion", which itself appears to have arisen in error.〔Richard Gilbert, (Stalking the Wild Onji )〕〔T. Kondo, "In support of onji rather than jion," ''Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America'', 1:4, 30-31 (1978)〕 The normal Japanese term in the context of counting sounds in poetry is "''on''".〔 Counting ''on'' in Japanese poetry is the same as counting characters when the text is 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 syllable may contain one, two or three morae and, because English word sounds are not readily representable in hiragana, a single syllable may require many more ''ji'' to be transliterated into hiragana. There is disagreement among linguists as to the definitions of "syllable" and "mora".〔Ellen Broselaw, ''Skeletal Positions and Moras'', in John A Goldsmith (ed.), ''The Handbook of Phonological Theory''. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996, ISBN 978-0-631-20126-7, p175ff〕 In contrast, ''ji'' (and hence ''on'') is unambiguously defined by reference to hiragana. ==Examples== To illustrate the distinction between ''on'' and syllables, the following four words each contain the same number of ''on'', but different numbers of syllables: :Nippon (ni-p-po-n) - 4 ''on'', but 2 syllables :Tokyo (to-u-kyo-u) - 4 ''on'', but 2 syllables :Osaka (o-o-sa-ka) - 4 ''on'', but 3 syllables :Nagasaki (na-ga-sa-ki) - 4 ''on'', also 4 syllables.〔Peter Howell, John Van Borsel. ''Multilingual Aspects of Fluency Disorders. Volume 5 of Communication Disorders Across Languages''. Multilingual Matters, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84769-358-7 p146〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「On (Japanese prosody)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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