For example, the plain verb form 見る (miru, "see") inflects to past tense 見た (mita, "saw"), where 見 is the kanji stem, and る and た are okurigana, written in hiragana script.
The technique in which native scripts are used to inflect adjectives or verbs may have initially taken after Korean scribal stategies, namely gugyeol, and later spread to Japan.
[citation needed] 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.
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).
A simple example uses the character 高 (high) to express the four basic cases of a Japanese adjective.
Compare the direct polite verb forms to their distant forms, which follow a similar pattern, but whose meaning indicates more distance between the speaker and the listener: Okurigana are also used as phonetic complements to disambiguate kanji that have multiple readings, and consequently multiple meanings.
Okurigana for disambiguation are a partial gloss, and are required: for example, in 下さる, the stem is 下さ (and does not vary under inflection), and is pronounced くださ (kudasa) – thus 下 corresponds to the reading くだ (kuda), followed by さ (sa), which is written here kuda-sa.
[note 6] One of the most complex examples of okurigana is the kanji 生, pronounced shō or sei in borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which stands for several native Japanese words as well: as well as the hybrid Chinese-Japanese words Note that some of these verbs share a kanji reading (i, u, and ha), and okurigana are conventionally picked to maximize these sharings.
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.
This is particularly the case for words which function as adjectives, with notable categories including: Note that only the -i in -shii inflects; the other kana are invariant, and in practice serve only for disambiguation and to reflect historical grammar.
Note that such adverbs are often written in kana, such as 全く matta-ku まったく and 専ら moppa-ra もっぱら.
For example, in the common phrase 立入禁止 (tachi-iri kin-shi, Do not enter; literally, entry prohibited) in analyzed as 立ち入り + 禁止, but the okurigana are usually dropped.
The above rules are guidelines, and there are exceptions and special cases that must be learnt individually: okurigana that has become standard for historical reasons (now obscure or not obvious at a glance) or by convention rather than logic.
Scope: Examples for each rule, with permitted variations: There are 16 special cases listed, 7 where okurigana are required or recommended, 9 where it is forbidden.
Required or recommended (acceptable alternatives in parentheses) (付表の語1): Forbidden (付表の語2): 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.
An everyday example is o-hayo-u (お早う, Good day), where the stem would normally be pronounced haya (はや), as this comes from the i-adjective haya-i (早い, early) – the a → o sound change must be inferred from the following -u.
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).
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).