I have trouble remembering the word endings written with hiragana after the kanji, so am I missing something? Is there any rules ? For example:


abunai - 危ない、or 危い
hajimeru - 始める、or 始る.....etc

I know that one is wrong but if I know the meaning of the kanji and how the word sounds I cannot tell which one is the correct from the two?

vebaev Wrote:I have trouble remembering the word endings written with hiragana after the kanji, so am I missing something? Is there any rules ? For example:


abunai - 危ない、or 危い
hajimeru - 始める、or 始る.....etc

I know that one is wrong but if I know the meaning of the kanji and how the word sounds I cannot tell which one is the correct from the two?

You have to remember the hiragana endings for each word. This is where an SRS program like Anki is helpful, unless you plan on reading all the time to reinforce what you learn.

As for your questions
危ない　is correct, not 危い (あぶい）
始める is correct, not 始る (はじる-->恥じる), a completely different word.

I'm afraid there's no shortcut to this, just got to encounter more words to see some type of pattern. It shouldn't be a problem when you are reading because their wouldn't be any errors usually, but when producing words, usually the computer will help you unless you decide on handwriting everything.

The word endings are called okurigana (送り仮名). In the examples you wrote, I think that 始まる and 危ない are more common, but since there is no other word that could be implied without the ま or the な respectively, it is okay to write it if you want to be cool like that.
Maybe Vix and Yudantaiteki will come school us both.

It seems Xanpakuto and I were writing different answers at the same time.

Xanpakuto Wrote:unless you plan on reading all the time to reinforce what you learn.

You should do this.

tashippy Wrote:The word endings are called okurigana (送り仮名). In the examples you wrote, I think that 始まる and 危ない are more common, but since there is no other word that could be implied without the ま or the な respectively, it is okay to write it if you want to be cool like that.
Maybe Vix and Yudantaiteki will come school us both.

They could be confused for 始める (though it wouldn't surprise me if there were rule that a まる/める pair with just a る is always まる) and 危うい. My dictionaries actually disagree on whether 危い should be 危ない or 危うい.

Whichever version the IME offers first is most likely to be the best way to go.

Usually it's just for disambiguation but there are some special exceptions because it's really based on historical use. So it's 食べる because historically that comes from a verb 食ぶ, and all the adjectives ending in -shii are 新しい, 美しい, etc. for historical reasons too.

So are there some where mention about more of these cases like -しい you told, this will help anyway a lot

I'm not sure how much you need to worry about this, since I think this is one of the thing that gets easy overtime. In the long run you're going to see a word hundreds of times more than you'll write it, and you'll just get used to which parts of a word the kanji covers. I don't think you need to do anything special, it'll work itself out.

In the mean time you'll just have to look it up if you forget.

My personal opinion with little information to go off of, but off of my personal experience I would think this is a simple lack of input issue. You should be able to figure this out better the more you read or by SRSing some vocab examples.

Even doing a premade vocab deck like Core2K should help. Just pay extra attention to the verbs.

Yes, I'm starting core 2 step 1,2,3... and starting in parallel Japanese the mangaway for a grammer:

What you mean to be warned for the verbs when I SRSing the core?

vebaev Wrote:What you mean to be warned for the verbs when I SRSing the core?

A kanji can have multiple verb readings depending on the okurigana. For example,

生きる (いきる), 生む (うむ), 生やす (はやす)...

are distinct verbs with completely different meanings (to live, to give birth to, to grow facial hair). Also, transitive/intransitive pairs like 始まる/始める (はじまる/はじめる) are extremely common. See http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=11178

Most い-adjectives are simply -い or -しい, and it's usually one adjective per kanji.

Thanks for that link, Vempele. I'm excited to read that thread later, though I've started to grasp transitive/intransitive much better lately.

I am a little mixed up about how I should know the reading for 止める. Sometimes it's ya and sometimes it's to. Which is more common and what's the difference in the meaning?

Been meaning to ask: Yudantaiteki, how have you gone about learning grammar and etymology so well? Have you checked out Japanese grammar books for natives/dictionaries, same in English, wiktionary.com, or have you mainly practiced noticing over time through input, inquiries and reading? Either way I suppose I'll dabble in all of the above in due time.

Edit: Of course the last question is really for anyone, e.g. Vempele, et. al.

tashippy Wrote:I am a little mixed up about how I should know the reading for 止める. Sometimes it's ya and sometimes it's to. Which is more common and what's the difference in the meaning?

"To stop".
The object of やめる is an action you were doing or about to do.
The object of とめる is a person or thing that is moving/acting or about to.

There's also とどめる, for for when "to stop" doesn't make any sense (and sometimes when it does). Consult a good dictionary when that happens, I haven't seen it enough to talk about it.

There are some Japanese shows where participants have to write those okurigana, and they often fail 　This series for example:

That was fun