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Kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words

are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb form (miru, "see") inflects to past tense (mita, "saw"), where 見 is the kanji stem, and る and た are okurigana, written in hiragana script. With very few exceptions, okurigana are only used for kun'yomi (native Japanese readings), not for on'yomi (Chinese readings), as Chinese morphemes do not inflect in Japanese, and their pronunciation is inferred from context, since many are used as parts of compound words (kango). The technique in which native scripts are used to inflect adjectives or verbs was first used by Korean scribes in the form of gugyeol, and later spread to Japan. When used to inflect an adjective or verb, okurigana can indicate aspect (perfective versus imperfective), affirmative or negative meaning, or grammatical politeness, among many other functions. In modern usage, okurigana are almost invariably written with hiragana; katakana were also commonly used in the past.

Analogous orthographic conventions find occasional use in English, which, being more familiar, help in understanding okurigana. As an inflection example, when writing Xing for cross ing, as in Ped Xing (pedestrian crossing), the ing is a verb suffix, while cross is the dictionary form of the verb – in this case cross is the reading of the character X, while ing is analogous to okurigana. By contrast, in the noun Xmas for Christmas, the character Χ is instead read as Christ (it is actually a chi in origin, from the Greek Χριστός, Khristós). The suffixes serve as phonetic complements to indicate which reading to use. Another common example is in ordinal and cardinal numbers – "1" is read as one, while "1st" is read as fir st. Note that word, morpheme (constituent part of word), and reading may be distinct: in "1", "one" is at once the word, the morpheme, and the reading, while in "1st", the word and the morpheme are "first", while the reading is fir, as the st is written separately, and in "Xmas" the word is "Christmas" while the morphemes are Christ and mas, and the reading "Christ" coincides with the first morpheme.

Okurigana may also be used in multi kanji words, where the okurigana specifies the pronunciation of the entire word, not simply the character that they follow; these distinguish multi kanji native words from kango (borrowed Chinese words) with the same characters. Examples include nouns such as 気配り kikubari "care, consideration" versus 気配 kehai "indication, hint, sign" (note that the reading of 気 changes between ki and ke, despite it not having an okurigana of its own), and verbs, such as 流行る hayaru "be popular, be fashionable", versus 流行 ryūkō "fashion". Note that in this later case, the native verb and the borrowed Chinese word with the same kanji have approximately the same meaning, but are pronounced differently. Okurigana can also occur in the middle of a compound, such as 落ち葉 ochiba "fallen leaves" and 落葉 rakuyō "fallen leaves, defoliation" – note that the reading of the terminal 葉 changes between ba and yō despite it occurring after the okurigana.

While MEXT prescribes rules and permitted variations, in practice there is much variation – permitted or not – particularly in older texts (prior to guidelines) and online – note that these rules are not prescriptive for personal writings, but only in official documents and media. As an example, the standard spelling of the word kuregata is 暮れ方, but it will sometimes be seen as 暮方.

While okurigana are sufficient to show inflection of adjectives and verbs, in rare cases further sound change occurs that affects the stem, and must be inferred from the okurigana, without being explicitly written. An everyday example is (お早う), where the stem would normally be pronounced (はや), as this comes from the i adjective (早い) – the a → o sound change must be inferred from the following u. This sound change is due to this being a polite adjective form. If there is additional non inflectional okurigana, then these are change, and this is sufficient to show the sound change in the spelling. This occurs for adjectives ending in shii, like (嬉しい), hence (嬉しゅう). A basic example other than shii of such okurigana use is (大きゅう), from (大きい).

There is a risk of confusion of okurigana with compounds: some Japanese words are traditionally written with kanji, but today some of these kanji are hyōgaiji (uncommon characters), and hence are often written as a mixture of kanji and kana, the uncommon characters being replaced by kana; this is known as mazegaki. The resulting orthography is seen by some as confusing and unsightly, particularly if it is the second character that is written in kana – the kana characters are where okurigana would be expected to go – and this is one motivation for expansions of kanji lists. For example, until the 2010 expansion of the jōyō kanji, the word kanpeki (perfect) was officially written 完ぺき, not as the compound 完璧, since the character 璧 was not on the official list, and takarakuji (lottery) is officially (and also popularly) written as 宝くじ, not as 宝籤, since the second character is not in the jōyō kanji and is also quite complicated. This is less of an issue when the first kanji is written in kana, as in ヤシ殻 (yashi kaku, coconut shell), which is formally 椰子殻.

Converse to okurigana, where part of the pronunciation of a word is written after the kanji, in some cases following kana is dropped (or included in the reading of the previous character). This is primarily for the attributive particles 〜の no (sometimes written in katakana as ノ) and 〜が ga (sometimes written ヶ or ケ), and is most common in names. For example, the common family name Inoue (I no ue Well’s top, top of well) is generally written 井上, though if the particle were written it would be 井の上. Similarly, Amagasaki (Ama ga saki, Nun’s peak) is generally written 尼崎, but can be written 尼ヶ崎, and Sen no Rikyū is written 千利休 (here the particle is between the family and given name). This can sometimes cause ambiguity, as in the Yamanote Line (for a time called the Yamate Line) and the Agatsuma Line (which could be read as Azuma). Particles are considered grammatically separate from the attached word (they are not an inflection), and this is not considered okurigana, despite some superficial similarities.

Japanese has various affixes, some of which are written in kana and should not be confused with okurigana. Most common are the honorifics, which are generally suffixes, such as 〜さん san (Mr., Ms.), and bikago (美化語, "beautified language"), such as お〜 and ご〜 as in お茶 (ocha, tea).