One question people learning Japanese may have is: does Japanese have spaces between words like English? The answer is: no, not really, but sort of, yes.

Most of the time, Japanese does not use spaces between words. All words are written without any sort of explicit division between them. The only thing in common with English is that words aren't broken in the middle when a line ends; lines often end in a word and start with another word.

You may think this is insane because, after all, how would you be able to tell the words apart without spaces?! But in Japanese you can tell the words apart based solely on the alphabet used to write them (hiragana, katakana or kanji) and on certain word patterns you get used to after a while, so spaces aren't really necessary in the written language.

However, there are still cases where a space is put between words in Japanese, rare cases, yes, but they exist.

One thing beginners learning the Japanese language might find confusing and maybe even mysterious is how to tell the words apart in Japanese. After all, Japanese, unlike English, doesn't quite use spaces to separate words. So how do you know where a word starts and where it ends?

The trick is to rely on patterns, mostly patterns based on the alternating Japanese alphabets.

Fun fact: there are over 50000 kanji characters! Literally over 9000!!!!11

Oh, that wasn't fun? You are learning Japanese? Okay, then, a better fun fact, then: you only need to know about 2000 kanji to read most Japanese stuff!

Alright, 2000 isn't very fun either, but it's better, okay?

Anyway, the jouyou kanji 常用漢字, also romanized as jōyō kanji, is a set of 2000-something kanji officially classified as "normal use," jouyou 常用. The purpose of this classification is to standardize the language. People learn these 2000 kanji in school and then most stuff should be written with these 2000 kanji. This way most kanji written in Japanese are kanji most people know to read.

Without the jouyou kanji, stuff would get written with weird kanji not everybody knows about, so it'd make language itself useless.

Because of how Japanese works, some words can be written with any of the Japanese alphabets: they can be written with kanji, without kanji, with hiragana, or with katakana. And sometimes the reason why they're written with one instead of the other is a purely aesthetic choice.

This doesn't happen on whim, though. We're talking design here. Srsbsns. One script naturally looks different from the other. In a word:

• Katakana looks cool.
• Hiragana looks chummy.
• Kanji looks serious.

In Japanese, sometimes a word is written with katakana instead of kanji or hiragana. This may happen for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, if a word does not have kanji, or if you want to write a word without kanji for some reason, it's generally better to write it with katakana instead of writing it with hiragana..

This happens because hiragana is normally used to write the stuff between words, such as grammatical particles and okurigana, and not to write the words themselves. So using katakana makes more sense, as that way it's easier to tell the words apart.

In Japanese, sometimes a word is written with hiragana instead of kanji or katakana. This can happen for a couple of reasons.

First and foremost, if a word does not have kanji, or if you want to write a word without kanji for some reason, it's generally better to write the word with katakana instead.

This happens because hiragana is normally used to write the stuff between words, such as grammatical particles and okurigana, and not to write the words themselves. So using katakana makes more sense, as that way it's easier to tell the words apart.

However, sometimes a word is such that it looks like "the stuff between words," and not like a distinctly meaningful word itself. When this happens, it gets written with hiragana instead of katakana.

In Japanese, most words are written with kanji, but sometimes a word is written with kana instead of kanji, be it with hiragana or katakana. This can happen for a number of reasons.

First off, some words simply do not have kanji, and if there's no kanji for the word, it's only natural that it can't be written with kanji. This case, however, is rather rare, as most common words do have kanji in Japanese.

Second, we have extremely simple, extremely common words, such as mama まま, for example. Since they're so common and simple, writing them with kanji feels like an overkill that'd make every phrase much harder to hand write. So such words get written with hiragana instead.

Likewise, suffixes are often written without their kanji. For example, nai 無い, "nonexistent," has a kanji, but it's rarely used as a lone adjective. It's far more common as an auxiliary adjective, like in shinai しない, "to not do." So that gets written as shinai しない, without kanji, and nobody ever writes it as shinai し無い.

Most Japanese words are written with kanji, or with a mix of kanji and kana, which might be okurigana, instead of solely with hiragana or katakana.

This is the norm. When there's a kanji for a word, that word normally gets written with that kanji, even thought it could be written with hiragana and katakana instead if one wanted to.

In some cases, a word that doesn't have kanji can get written with kanji anyway. This happens when people simply pretend that kanji exist for that word, turning the word into an "artificial reading," a gikun 儀訓. In this case, the kanji are chosen based on their meanings. If the kanji are chosen based on their readings instead, it's called an ateji 当て字.

In Japanese, most words are written with kanji, which might mislead you into thinking that all Japanese words can be written with kanji, and that there is a kanji for every word. This is not true. There are words in Japanese that simply do not have any kanji associated with them.

The most obvious case where this happens, for example, is with loaned words. When a word is loaned from Chinese, it may have kanji, because the kanji came from Chinese. But when a word is loaned from English, English doesn't have kanji, so the word doesn't get to have kanji in Japanese either.

Such words, loaned from the west, are called gairaigo 外来語, and they undergo a process called katakanization and are written with katakana instead. Because these words aren't associated with kanji but with katakana, they're sometimes called "katakana words," katakana-go カタカナ語.

The Japanese language is full of homonyms, and if you're planning on learning Japanese, or at least understand what characters are saying in anime, then you got to know what homonyms are, and what are homophones and homographs.

• Definition
• Homophones
• Homographs
• True Homonyms
• Telling Homonyms Apart
• Wordplay Usage

Sometimes in Japanese, a single word is spelled with different kanji. This can happen for multiple reasons.

Primarily, those different kanji may have slightly different meanings, and in writing they can specify which is the meaning of the word. This happens when a word can be used in multiple different ways.

For example, the word hayai はやい means either "fast" or "early," but if you're fast you're probably getting there early, and if you're early it was probably because you were fast, so they mean almost the same thing most of the time.

In writing, different kanji specify the meaning of the word. If it's hayai 早い, it means "early," if it's hayai 速い, it means "fast." To be honest, I'm not sure if they're the same word or different words that are homophones, but that's how it works.

Sometimes, in Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write multiple, different words.

For example, 金 is the kanji for the word kane 金, "money," and kin 金, "gold." In this case it'd be called an homograph, since both words are written exactly the same. Note that, when multiple words are written with the same kanji, each word becomes one of the kanji's readings.

Another example: hosoi 細い, "thin," and komakai 細かい, "fine," "detailed." This isn't an homograph, since the hiragana at the end of the word changes. This kana, by the way, gets called okurigana, and is used precisely to let you tell apart multiple words written with the same kanji.

A more complex example: gaikoku 外国, "outside country," a "foreign country," and kokugai 国外, "country's outside," that is, "outside of the country." Here, we have different words written with the same, multiple kanji. But in one word the kanji order is reversed, and changing the order of the kanji changes the meaning of the word.

Sometimes in Japanese two words are written with the same kanji, but one is spelled in one way, while the other is spelled backwards. That is, the order of the kanji is reversed.

This is something to watch out for if you're trying to guess the meaning of words from their kanji, because even though the meaning of the kanji remain the same, and the reading may vary a bit, the last kanji generally represents a noun morpheme, while the preceding would act as modifiers.

If the order changes, which kanji are modifiers change too, and as a result the meaning of the whole word changes.

For example: gaijin 外人 is written with the kanji for the word "outside," soto 外, and "person," hito 人. So literally an "outside person," a "foreigner."

However, when you write gaijin backwards you get jingai 人外, which has "person" modifying "outside," meaning it's something "outside of people." Indeed, the word jingai can be used to refer to non-human stuff, like monsters, monster girls, etc. which are outside of what you'd call "people."


But that's just in anime-land. Normally, jingai would refer to a person who acts inhumanly, or to their inhuman acts, or refer to a place "outside of people['s realm]," that is, a place nobody lives on, an uninhabited place.

Some more examples:

In Japanese, the letters QK mean a "pause" or "break" to rest. A "recess." It comes from the Japanese word kyuukei 休憩, which, as you'd expect, mean exactly those same things.

The reason why QK in Japanese is kyuukei is that the names of the letters Q and K in English are "cue" and "kay." When "cue" and "kay" are katakanized, they become kyuu キュー and kei ケイ. So the letters are read as kyuu Q, kei K, kyuukei QK.

This can also be seen in the word ecchi エッチ, which is sometimes represented by the letter H in Japanese.

In Japanese, the letter H stands for the word ecchi エッチ, and it means something along the lines of "sex," "sexy," "sexual," or even a bit "sexually perverted."

• Context: a girl doesn't like her uniform.
• nani itteru no yo
  なに言ってるのよ
  What are [you] saying?!
• konna ecchi na fuku wo
  kiseru tsumori!?
  こんなＨな服着せるつもり！？
  [You] intend to make [us] wear such perverted clothing!?
• senaka wa konna ni deteru shi!
  背中はこんなに出てるし！
  The back is getting out this much!
• It's this much exposed!
• sukaato wa chou mijikai shi!!
  スカートは超短いし！！
  The skirt is super short!!

So the name of the manga and anime B-gata H-kei B型H系, for example, would mean "[blood] type B, perverted (ecchi) type [of character]." (in this case, B-gata refers to a superstition about personality, where people with type B blood are creative and cheerful, but irresponsible and impatient)

As for why H means ecchi, it's because the name of the letter H in English is "aitch." And when "aitch" is katakanized, it becomes ecchi.

It's originally the reverse: the word ecchi is the one that comes from the letter H. And it comes from the letter H because it's the first letter in the romaji of the word hentai 変態, which's used to call someone a "pervert," among other things.

In Japanese, it's possible to guess the meaning of a word by the kanji that compose that word. This is because, although the readings of the kanji may vary according to the morpheme it represents, the meaning of the kanji remains somewhat constant across different words.

This means if you have a kanji for a word, and kanji for another word, a word that combines both kanji is sort of a mix of both of those words.

• Understanding Morphemes
• Types of Combinations
• Pitfalls
• Guessing What a Kanji Means
• Examples

Sometimes, a kanji is said to be the kanji for a given word if that word can be written with that kanji alone, or that kanji plus okurigana. That is, the meaning of the kanji match the meaning of the word, and so the word became one of the kanji's readings.

This is useful when dealing with kanji representing morphemes in words instead of whole words.

For example, danshi 男子, "boy," is written with the kanji for the words otoko 男, "man," and ko 子, "child." So "boy" is a word with two morphemes: dan-shi, and those morphemes are written with the same kanji as the words otoko and ko.


An example with okurigana: tousou 逃走, "to run away," is written with the kanji for the verbs nigeru 逃げる, "to escape," and hashiru 走る, "to run."

Another utility of this is that knowing the word associated with the kanji can help you guess the meaning of words by their kanji when multiple kanji are mixed together. For example: a word that mixes onna 女, "woman," and "child" together, can be guessed to mean "girl," joshi 女子.

In Japanese, the kanji characters may have meanings associated with them.

Knowing the meaning of a kanji is useful because you can guess the meaning of a word from its kanji if you know their meanings. The easiest way to know a kanji's meaning is to find a word the kanji is for, that is, a word that's written with that kanji alone and no other kanji..

Not all kanji have meanings. Some kanji represent words, and they're called logographs. Some kanji represent ideas, and they're called ideographs. But there are also kanji which are phonetic, and other stuff too. So they don't all have meanings. Only some of them do.

For those that do, the meaning may be hinted in the kanji's radical. For example, kin 金, "gold," gin 銀, "silver," and dou 銅, "bronze," all have a 金 radical.

The meaning of a kanji is strongly related to the meaning of the morphemes written with said kanji. Since the readings of a kanji come from the morphemes, the meanings and readings of a kanji end up being related in a way or another.

Sometimes, a kanji's meaning may be completely disregarded and only its reading considered. For example, in ateji 当て字 words.

The names of the four seasons in Japanese are natsu, haru, fuyu and aki.

• natsu 夏
  Summer.
• haru 春
  Spring.
• fuyu 冬
  Winter.
• aki 秋
  Autumn.

In Japanese, ateji 当て字, "matching characters," are kanji 漢字 used to spell a word that wasn't originally written with those kanji, including words that even don't have kanji to begin with.

They're called ateji because the reading of the kanji, or the meaning of the kanji, matches the word.

For example, gairaigo 外来語 like English loan-words don't have kanji and are normally spelled with katakana. So a word like "Canada" is katakanized as Kanada カナダ.

However, given it's the name of a nation, you may want it to look serious, and kanji looks more serious than katakana. So an ateji may be used: kanada 加奈陀. These kanji were "matched" against the pronunciation of the word: ka 加, na 奈, da 陀.

In Japanese, a yojijukugo 四字熟語 is literally a "four-character idiom," that is, an idiom written with exactly four kanji. This word is sometimes misread as shijijukugo, because the Japanese number "four" can be read as shi or yon.

• Concept
• Examples
• Not Yojijukugo
• List of Yojijukugo

In Japanese, the kanji 漢字 have multiple readings, which means a single kanji may be read in different ways depending on the word. For example, youna 様な and samazama 様様, This can be a bit confusing for beginners since it works in a way totally alien for us mere Latin alphabet users.

The Japanese characters known as kanji, unlike our alphabet characters, and even unlike the Japanese characters known as kana, have multiple, different readings.

This means that a single kanji can be read in different ways.

For example, the verb "to read" in Japanese is yomu 読む. In this word, the kanji is read as yo 読. But in another word, "reader," dokusha 読者, the same kanji is read as doku 読.

So a single kanji may not have a single "reading," yomi 読み, but multiple. And these multiple readings can even be classified as kun'yomi 訓読み and on'yomi 音読み depending on their origin, although they also have other differences, like on'yomi being more associated with morphemes instead of words.

Most words use the standard readings associated with their kanji, but sometimes they aren't pronounced exactly the same. This mostly happens because of rendaku 連濁 and sokuonbin 促音便.

Furthermore, there are non-standard readings called gikun 義訓, and readings which aren't associated to a single kanji but a compound, the jukujikun 熟字訓.

Given this myriad of readings a kanji may have, the Japanese writing system has features such as furigana and okurigana which can be used to tell how to correctly read the kanji in a word. Also, in rare cases, the radical of a kanji may hint how it's read.

In Japanese, gikun 義訓, meaning "artificial kun'yomi reading," refers to writing a different word in the furigana 振り仮名 space (a.k.a. in the ruby text). More technically, it refers to giving a kanji 漢字 a non-standard reading that only makes sense in a given context.

In Japanese, a jukujikun 熟字訓 is a special type of kun'yomi kanji reading, literally a "kanji compound kun [reading]."

It mostly happens when a single morpheme is written with multiple kanji instead of one. For example:

• hito 人
  Person
  Kun'yomi, one morpheme, one kanji.
• jinsei 人生
  Life [of a person].
  On'yomi, two morphemes, two kanji.
• otona 大人
  Adult.
  Jukujikun, one morpheme, two kanji.

The consequence of a jukujikun reading is that it's impossible divide the reading of the word in two. For example, you can divide jinsei 人生, which has two morphemes, into jin 人 sei 生. But you can't divide otona into oto 大 na 人 or o 大 tona 人.

In Japanese, sokuonbin 促音便 is a change in pronunciation that adds a sokuon 促音, a "geminate consonant," also called a "double consonant," represented by the small tsu っ or literally doubling the consonant in romaji, at the boundary of two morphemes.

It's why gakusei 学生, "student," and koukou 高校, "high school," combine not into gaku-kou がくこう, as you would expect, but into gakkou がっこう (学校), "school," changing the ku く of the first morpheme into the small tsu っ.

Other examples include: ippatsu 一発 (ichi + hatsu), ikkagetsu 一ヶ月 (ichi + kagetsu), kekkou 結構 (ketsu + kou), mikka 三日 (mitsu + ka), nikki 日記 (nichi + ki), and so on.

• Explanation
• Occurrence
  
  • Verbs
  • Non-Verbs
  • Unprescribed
  • Historic
  • Sokuon Insertion
    
    • Intensification
• Examples
  
  • く + かきくけこ
  • つ + かきくけこ
  • ち + かきくけこ
  • つ + たちつてと
  • ち + たちつてと
  • つ + はひふへほ
  • ち + はひふへほ
  • つ + さしすせそ
  • ち + さしすせそ

In morphosyntax, a morpheme is the smallest part of a language that has any meaning. Normally, one would think that would be a word, however, some words are made out of multiple morphemes, which means a morpheme can be smaller than a single word.

One example in English is the suffix "-ian" in the words Italian, Canadian, Martian, and so on. The words that share this "-ian" morpheme share its meaning, however, "-ian" alone doesn't mean anything: it isn't a word by itself, it's a morpheme.

Note: all words are composed of morphemes. Even "cat" contains one morpheme: "cat." So there are morphemes that can be used as words, also called "free morphemes," and morphemes that are always used as affixes, also called "bound morphemes."

• In Japanese

Every now and then you see a single same word with multiple, different romaji. Specially containing letters with macrons, like āēīōūn̄.

For example, arigato, arigatō and arigatou. Or kohai, kōhai, and kouhai. Or senpai and sempai. Or on'yomi and onyomi. Or "monster" being monsutaa, monsutā or left as literally monster in romaji.

After all, what's the correct romaji for these words? And why does this even happen?

• Which Romaji Is Correct?
• English Words in Romaji
• Aa / ā / a
• Ei / ē / e / ee
• Ii / ī / i
• Ou / ō / o / oo
• Uu / ū / u
• N / m
• N / n- / n' / n̄
• Hyphens
• Ha / wa, he / e, wo / o
• Fu / Hu
• Sho / Syo
• Chi / Ti
• Long Vowels

So you've learned what romaji is: the transliteration of Japanese words to the Latin alphabet. Good. But why is the romanization done in a way and not in another? Who decided the romaji in the romaji chart? Who chose which letters match which kana? And why?

The answer is: various people. And they did it in multiple ways, for different purposes. That's right, romaji isn't as simple as you thought. There are different system of romaji, or "romaji styles," roomaji-shiki ローマ字式.

This article doesn't explain in detail the rules of each system. It just attempts to highlight how one romaji system is different from another.

Katakanization, katakana-ization, and sometimes kana-ization, is the process of writing a non-Japanese word with a Japanese alphabet, or rather, a kana syllabary, specially the katakana syllabary.

It's what turns, for example, the word "blog," written with the Latin alphabet, into burogu ブログ, written with katakana.


Katakanization is used on western loan-words, gairaigo 外来語, wasei-eigo 和製英語, and western names, be it names of real people or names of things like Halloween and Christmas. Because such words are normally katakanized, they're sometimes called katakana-go カタカナ語, "katakana words."

Although katakanization may happen with any western word, it often happens with English, so, in Japanese, katakanized words are called katakana eigo カタカナ英語, "katakana English."

• Purpose
  
  • Pronunciation
  • A Warning About Romaji
• How It Works
  
  • Missing Sounds
  • Missing Consonants
  • Missing Diphthongs
  • Filler Long Vowels
  • Ending in Double Consonant + O or U
  • Homonyms
  • Variants
  • Modernization
  • V syllables
    
    • Replacing V by B
    • Disambiguation
  • Based on Spelling Alone
    
    • Darryl's Story
• Online Katakanizer
• Learning English With Katakana
  
  • Learning English With Lyrics
  • Problem With Katakanized Words
    
    • Unintelligible English

For reference, a basic chart containing the romaji of hiragana and katakana.

In Japanese, katakana-go カタカナ語 (also katakanago), and sometimes katakana kotoba カタカナ言葉, "katakana words," refers to loan-words coming from English and the west, that is, the gairaigo 外来語, which are noticeably written with katakana instead of kanji or hiragana, as they go through katakanization.

Despite katakana-go meaning literally "katakana words" or "katakana language," not all words written with katakana are called katakana-go. Again: it refers only to loan-words. For example, katakana カタカナ is not katakana-go, but arufabetto アルファベット is.

If an wasei-eigo 和製英語 is an English word Made in Japan™, an eisei-wago 英製和語 must be a Japanese word made in England AMERICA.

I mean, literally. Just look at the kanji: eisei 英製, "English-made," wago 和語, "Japanese word."

An eisei-wago is a Japanese word used by English speakers with a meaning that's not the same meaning it had originally in Japanese of Japan. That is, even though it's a Japanese word, a native Japanese speaker will find its meaning strange, because it doesn't mean the same thing he's used to it meaning.

In Japanese, wasei-eigo 和製英語 is a special type of loan-word. It is, as its kanji literally mean, a Japanese (wa 和) made (sei 製) English (ei 英) word (go 語). A Japanese-made English word. Or, in other words, an abomination English word that was invented in Japan.

Now you might be asking: how is this even possible? Japan doesn't really speak English, do they? They speak Japanese! According to the flags on language switchers, English is an American language, and sometimes a British language. English isn't official of Japan!

That's true. Japan doesn't speak English. But they do speak Engrish. Clearly just using a lot of English-made gairaigo 外来語 wasn't enough for them, so they took the matters into their own hands, seized the means of production, and started fabricating English... in Japan.

After all, why import English words if you can make them domestically?

• Gairaigo vs. Wasei-Eigo
• 和製外来語
• Examples
  
  • Skinship
  • Salaryman
  • Sechara
  • Service
    
    • Fanservice
  • H
  • Cunning
  • High teen
  • Bike
  • Bill
  • Note
  • Soft
  • Live
  • Range
  • Concent
  • New Half
    
    • Half vs. New Half
  • More Examples
• The Opposite

In Japanese, a gairaigo 外来語 is a type of loan-word. Not all words loaned to Japanese are called gairaigo. In particular, Chinese loan-words are not gairaigo. One of its synonyms, yougo 洋語, would imply it refers only to "western words," that is, words from outside of Asia.

The kanji of gairaigo 外来語 are literally "outside-coming word," the very definition of loan-word. But it's better to think of it like the term gaijin 外人, that is, it doesn't apply to China and Korea for some reason.

Because normally Japanese is written vertically, and the gairaigo usually come from languages written horizontally, the term yokomoji 横文字, literally "horizontal letters," is also synonymous with the foreign words.

If loaning words was like loaning money the Japanese language would be bankrupt. It loans, WAYYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyy too many words. Too many. Way more many than English and perhaps any other language in the world.

Japanese loans so many words it even has multiple ways to classify the words it loans. There are the gairaigo 外来語, or yougo 洋語, which are western loan-words. There are the wasei-eigo 和製英語, which are English words with an overwritten meaning. There are kango 漢語, which are loaned from Chinese. And the list probably goes on and on and on.

By the way, a Japanese word loaned to English is called a gaikougo 外行語. And the opposite of a wasei-eigo would be eisei-wago 英製和語.

In writing, a diacritic is a mark added to a letter that means it's pronounced differently from normal, like the ticks in the e's of résumé.

In Japanese, there are two diacritics, the dakuten 濁点 and the handakuten 半濁点. They're added to the kana 仮名, the hiragana and katakana, to turn "unvoiced sounds," seion 清音, into "voiced sounds," dakuon 濁音, or "semi-voiced sounds," handakuon 半濁音.

For example: unvoiced, ka-sa-ha-ta かさはた, voiced, ga-za-ba-da がざばだ, and semi-voiced, pa ぱ.

• 無声音, 有声音
• References

In Japanese, the ゜ diacritic, called handakuten 半濁点, literally half dakuten 濁点, is used to create "semi-voiced sounds," handakuon 半濁音, which are the sounds pa-pi-pu-pe-po ぱぴぷぺぽ.

It's also called handakuonfu 半濁音符, or maru 丸, "circle," because it looks like a circle.

In Japanese, the dakuten 濁点, sometimes called tenten てんてん, chonchon ちょんちょん, or dakuonpu 濁音符, are diacritics, accents used on kana to represent a "voice sound," a dakuon 濁音.

They look like two small diagonal marks ゛ on the top right of the kana. For example: ga が is ka か with dakuten.

The dakuten are applied to the consonants to turn them into voiced consonants. It's used to turn K-S-T-H into G-Z-D-B. The diacritic that turns H into P, and looks like a circle ゜, is called handakuten 半濁点, literally "half" dakuten.

In English, compound kana refers to when a kana 仮名 is followed by a small kana (sutegana 捨て仮名) to represent a single syllable that takes only one mora of time to pronounce, for example: kya きゃ.

Such syllables represent diphthongs—they have two vowels. In Japanese, this is called called youon 拗音, "distorted sound." For example: ki き has one vowel, while kya きゃ has two, and kiya きや has two vowels, too, but takes twice as long to pronounce.^{(福居誠二, 2017:68)}

Normally, the normal-sized kana ends in the ~i vowel, such as ki, ni, chi, shi きにちし, followed by a small ya, yu or yo ゃゅょ. This is called kai-youon 開拗音 and found in native words. Besides these, there are compounds used in loan words, like kuwa くゎ, guwa ぐゎ, called gou-youon 合拗音, and others, like fa ファ, va ヴァ.^{(福居誠二, 2017:p67, n21, p69)}

There are also compounds formed of two small kana, such as tyie ティェ:

In Japanese, the okurigana 送り仮名 are the kana written after a kanji (below or at its right, depending on the writing direction) to disambiguate which word it represents.

For example: komakai 細かい and hosoi 細い, "small" and "thin," are written with the same kanji, but its reading and meaning changes depending on the okurigana.

A word written only with kana never has okurigana, by definition, as okurigana only refers to kana after kanji (no kanji, no okurigana). Also, a suffix, auxiliary verb, or second word written with kana after a word written with kanji is not an okurigana. (example: suru する is not an okurigana, despite frequently coming after kanji)

The "small" kana, often called chiisai kana 小さいかな, are smaller versions of normal-sized kana, for example: aa あぁ. Another name for the small kana would be sutegana 捨て仮名, although that term may sometimes refer to the okurigana 送り仮名 instead.

The small kana aren't simply written smaller as an stylistic choice, they have purpose and function in the Japanese language, and you don't even need to change the font size to type them.

In Japanese, on'yomi 音読み, also transliterated as onyomi, and sometimes written in dictionaries as just on 音, refers to the reading of a kanji 漢字 based on its original Chinese reading from the time the kanji were imported from China into Japan.

However, note that, since it's been quite some time since it happened, the current, modern Chinese pronunciation of the kanji is not the same as the Japanese pronunciation of the on 音 readings.

The counterpart of on'yomi is the kun'yomi 訓読み. Their differences were explained in kun'yomi vs. on'yomi.

In Japanese, kun'yomi 訓読み, also transliterated as kunyomi, and sometimes written in dictionaries as just kun 訓, refers to a reading of a kanji 漢字 based on a Japanese word that existed before the kanji were imported into Japan from China.

Its counterpart is the on'yomi 音読み. Their differences are explained in kun'yomi vs. on'yomi.

The kanji 漢字 is one of the three Japanese "alphabets". Unlike the kana かな, the hiragana ひらがな and the katakana カタカナ, the kanji isn't actually a syllabic alphabet, but a collection of logograms, representing words, and ideograms, representing ideas and meanings, that even allow you to guess the meaning of a word from its kanji.

Also unlike the kana, the way a kanji character is read may vary depending on the word. A single kanji character may have multiple readings, which can be classified into kun'yomi 訓読み and on'yomi 音読み readings.


Sometimes kanji are accompanied by furigana 振り仮名 which tells the correct reading. Certain words contain okurigana 送り仮名 to help disambiguate the proper reading.

The katakana 片仮名 is one of the three Japanese "alphabets". It's counterpart of the hiragana ひらがな. Both katakana and hiragana are sometimes referred to as kana かな.

Unlike the kanji 漢字, whose readings may vary depending on the word, the way a kana such as katakana is read always stay the same.

The katakana is normally used to write loan-words, foreign (non-Japanese) names, onomatopoeic and mimetic words, the readings of kanji and words in online dictionaries, and to indicate speech sounds off (e.g. mispronounced, or badly pronounced, like a robot talking) in manga. Aesthetically, it looks cooler than the other "alphabets."

The hiragana 平仮名 is one of the three Japanese "alphabets". It's counterpart of the katakana カタカナ. Both hiragana and katakana are sometimes referred to as kana かな.

Unlike the kanji 漢字, whose readings may vary depending on the word, the way a kana such as hiragana is read always stay the same.

The hiragana is normally used to write the Japanese particles, the furigana 振り仮名, the okurigana 送り仮名, onomatopoeic and mimetic words, and to write other simple, common words and auxiliaries that aren't written with kanji. Aesthetically, it's chummier than the other "alphabets."

In Japanese, the kana 仮名 are the hiragana ひらがな and the katakana カタカナ syllabaries, or the characters (letters) that compose them. The kana, together with the kanji 漢字, would form the entirety of the Japanese alphabet.

Unlike kanji characters, which can be read differently depending on the word, the kana characters are always read the same way (except for when はへを are pronounced wa, e and o), consequently, the kana is normally used to explain how a kanji is supposed to be read.

A way this is done is through the furigana 振り仮名, which is written beside the kanji, and another is the okurigana 送り仮名, which is written after to distinguish between multiple standard readings.

Besides that, diacritics (dakuten 濁点 and handakuten 半濁点) can change the pronunciation of a kana, e.g. ha-ba-pa はばぱ.

For reference, a romaji chart showing an approximation of how the kana are pronounced:

For reference, the pronouns of the Japanese language, and the posts which talked about them.

• Personal Pronouns
• First Person
• Second Person
• Third Person
• "It"
• Demonstrative Pronouns
• This, That, What
• Here, There, Where
• Plural Pronouns
• Object Pronouns
• Possessive Pronouns
• Personal Pronouns Chart

In Japanese, おｋ means "ok" in Japanese, ok?

It's read oke おけ or ookee おーけー, ok?

It`s like up うｐ, ok?

• Nihongo de ok
• "Okay" in Japanese