Chaiku

A chaiku is the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese poetic form haiku. Whereas a haiku consists of three lines, the first and third containing five syllables and the second seven, a chaiku consists of four lines, each of which contains four syllables, a classical rhythmic pattern favored by Chinese poets. As Chinese is a monosyllabic language, a line of four syllables is of necessity a line containing four words. If a chaiku is composed in English, should each line contain four syllables or four words or four monosyllabic words? The chaiku could give birth to three distinct forms in English, that is to say, a quatrain with four syllables in each line, a quatrain with four words in each line and a quatrain with four words of one syllable in each line. Because English, like Japanese, is a polysyllabic language, we can discard the last form as impractical and concentrate on the first two. Which is preferable, lines with four syllables or lines with four words? Nota bene: "Chaiku" is a neologism, a "made-up" word not found in dictionaries or in Wikipedia. It is composed of "CHinese" and "hAIKU," and is meant to convey the notion that a Chinese poetic form can play the same role as haiku in the composition of verse in English.