How can I learn and recall okurigana?


As time goes on in our age of increasing reliance on computerized kanji input,
this question may become increasingly irrelevant, but when I'm writing a
sentence with (gasp!) pen and paper, I have always struggled to remember where
the dividing line between kanji and
[okurigana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okurigana) lies with each character.
Is there any way (aside from brute-force memorization, which I'm attempting at
the moment) to learn and reliably recall okurigana? Are there any patterns I
can rely on?




Other than brute-force memorization (棒暗記), the only thing I can suggest is
material regarding the Kanji-Kentei (漢検), because I know some of the (lower?)
levels focus on 送り仮名. Some materials I have are books of tests from previous
years (問題集), and a Nintendo DS 漢検 game. However, I got all of this in Japan,
so I don't know how accessible this kind of stuff would be for you
(Amazon.co.jp, have friends from Japan send you stuff, etc.) There's always
Google to maybe search for some online 送り仮名 quizzes.

For い-adjective, of course the い is always 送り仮名. There are also the 〜やか／〜らか
type adjectives, where that suffix is always 送り仮名 as well.

Learning verbs by their dictionary form will also help. Note however, that
there are often times where multiple forms of 送り仮名 are accepted. For example,
the verb とらわれる can be written both as 捕らわれる and 捕われる. This can throw a kink
into some verbs, but I think the ratio of multiple-accepted-送り仮名 verbs to one-
accepted-送り仮名 is probably pretty low.




Since the kanji part of both verbs and adjective is the part conveying the
root meaning of this particular adjective form, the okurigana (i.e. everything
that follows the part written in kanji) is rarely composed of anything else
except for derivation and conjugation suffixes.

Conjugation suffixes are easy enough, and I doubt they pose any problem for
you. You know that the `たかった` in 見たかった is the part that changes by
conjugation, it definitely has to be part of the okurigana. All other forms of
the verb 見る wouldn't give you any problem either.

I guess your problem really begins when you get to verbs like 変える and 帰る. Both
look essentially the same in their Rentaikei (base) forms, and in both only
the last syllable (る) changes - so why is the え in 変える spelled out in the
okurigana, while it is considered part of the Kanji in 帰る?

The answer for that is that the え here is part of the derivational suffix. If
we look at the verb's history, then it's original stem was actually `kap-`,
from which both `kaperu` (written かへる in old spelling and かえる today) and
`kaparu` (written かはる in old spelling and かわる today) are derived. As you can
see, two different derivational suffixes have been attached to this verbal
root to create the transitive (`kap **eru**`) and intransitive (`kap **aru**`)
versions of the verb.

These origin of these derivational suffixes may be a bit obscure nowadays, but
it's still easy to recognize the difference between 変える and 帰る by just
comparing them to their counterpart verbs written with the same kanji: 変わる and
帰す. You can see that in 変わる the two last syllables change and in 帰す only the
last syllable changes. That's why writing down the derivational suffixes in
okurigana is still relevant even today: because these parts of the verb
**still change**.

Now, it should be noted here (and it was already noted by istrasci, in fact)
that some verbs have more than one acceptable okurigana. Looking at older
texts, it seems to me that the standardization of okurigana is actually quite
recent, so we naturally have quite a few exceptions, whether they are
officially (or semi-officialy) accepted or not. But these exceptions to the
rule shouldn't bother you most of the time, since all it really means is that
you have **an extra form** , for which the derivational suffixes aren't fully
spelled out in okurigana (e.g. 捕われる, which derives from 捕る) - the other form
(with fully spelled out derivational suffixes) is still accepted, and usually
it's also the more common one.

As for い-"adjectives", they are a bit easier (like istrasci has noted), since
they are less often derived, but you should pay attention to the cases where
such adjectives are derived. They're usually easy to detect because of the
ending: adjectives ending with ない (such as 少ない and もったいない/勿体ない, but not 汚い),
たい (重たい) and しい (悲しい、親しい).

