ways to say ‘seems like’ or ‘-ish’ in japanese.
in the order in which i learned them. these are highly productive suffixes, in that they can be attached to many, many nouns/adjectives/adverbs to make new adjectives.
NOTE: i use apostrophes to compensate for some of the limitations of rōmaji, as it doesn’t reliably indicate which vowels are devoiced. if you see an ‘ in any of my transliterations, it stands in for an i or u sound that gets flattened (but still pronounced!) in speech.
~臭い(くさい, k’sai)
literally ‘smells like’. this particular kanji (臭, nioi) refers to unpleasant smells. i’m not sure if the pleasantly-scented analogue kanji 匂 (also read nioi) can be used in the same way.
なんかさっきから聞いてると胡散臭いな… nanka sakk' kara kiiteru to usank’sai na... i have been listening to the crap coming out of [your] mouth for a while [and] it smells fishy...

















