Okurigana

Okurigana (送り仮名, literally "accompanying letters") are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. Generally used to inflect an adjective or verb, okurigana can indicate tense (past or present/future), affirmative/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.

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Adjectives in Japanese use okurigana to indicate tense and affirmation/negation, with all adjectives using the same pattern of suffixes for each case. A simple example uses the character "高" (high) to express the four basic cases of a Japanese adjective. The root meaning of the word is expressed via the kanji ("高", read taka and meaning "high" in each of these cases), but crucial information (negation and tense) can only be understood by reading the okurigana following the kanji stem.

Kana: :For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation)....

Kanji: Kanji (, literally "Han characters") are Chinese characters used in Japanese. Kanji are one of the five character sets used in the modern Japanese writing system, the other four being hiragana, katakana, the Roman alphabet (r?maji), and Arabic numerals....

Japanese: When used as an adjective, Japanese refers to anything that originates from Japan. It may refer to more than one article:...