{"id":102,"date":"2022-12-23T16:21:43","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T16:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/?p=102"},"modified":"2024-07-04T18:03:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T18:03:51","slug":"what-are-okurigana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/what-are-okurigana\/","title":{"rendered":"What are Okurigana? (Answered)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\nOkurigana (\u9001\u308a\u4eee\u540d &#8211; literally: &#8220;accompanying characters&#8221;) are characters that appear after a kanji character in a Japanese word. They are used to indicate the inflection or pronunciation of the kanji, and are typically written in hiragana. For example, in the word &#8220;<ruby>\u8aad<rt>\u3088<\/rt><\/ruby>\u3081\u308b&#8221; (yomu, meaning &#8220;can read&#8221;), the kanji is &#8220;\u8aad&#8221; and the okurigana are &#8220;\u3081&#8221; and &#8220;\u308b&#8221;. The okurigana are not part of the kanji itself, but rather a separate part of the word that helps to indicate its pronunciation and grammatical function.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Okurigana are often used in Japanese to help disambiguate the meanings of words that are written with the same kanji but have different pronunciations or meanings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-extra-large-font-size\">Another example:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\nOkurigana are often used to indicate the inflection or conjugation of verbs and adjectives in Japanese. For example, in the word &#8220;<ruby>\u8d70<rt>\u306f\u3057<\/rt><\/ruby>\u308b&#8221; (hashiru, meaning &#8220;to run&#8221;), the kanji is &#8220;\u8d70&#8221; and the okurigana here is &#8220;\u308b,&#8221; which indicates that the verb is in the infinitive form. Similarly, in the word &#8220;<ruby>\u7f8e<rt>\u3046\u3064\u304f<\/rt><\/ruby>\u3057\u3044&#8221; (utsukushii, meaning &#8220;beautiful&#8221;), the kanji is &#8220;\u7f8e&#8221; and the okurigana are &#8220;\u3057\u3044,&#8221; which indicates that the adjective is in the i-adjective form.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okurigana (\u9001\u308a\u4eee\u540d &#8211; literally: &#8220;accompanying characters&#8221;) are characters that appear after a kanji character in a Japanese word. They are used to indicate the inflection or pronunciation of the kanji, and are typically written in hiragana. For example, in the word &#8220;\u8aad\u3088\u3081\u308b&#8221; (yomu, meaning &#8220;can read&#8221;), the kanji is &#8220;\u8aad&#8221; and the okurigana are &#8220;\u3081&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,16],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiragana","category-kanji","tag-kana"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joyokanjikai.com\/learning-japanese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}