Gachi, Gimi, and Ppanashi: Tendency and Excess Suffixes

Why these suffixes are worth learning early

Beginner Japanese describes what happened. Intermediate Japanese describes how something leans, and these suffixes are the cheapest way to get there. Instead of yoku okuremasu for I am often late, a speaker says okuregachi desu and the listener hears a settled tendency with a shade of regret in it. Instead of a paragraph about a mild cold, kazegimi desu does the whole job in three syllables, which is exactly why it is the first thing said when calling in to work.

They are also grammatically cheap. Every one of the six turns its base into something that behaves like a noun, so it takes desu, it takes na before a noun, and it takes ni naru when the state develops. That means you do not have to learn a new conjugation, only the attachment rule and the nuance. The attachment rule is where mistakes happen: three of these attach to verbs, three attach only to nouns, and mixing the groups produces sentences a Japanese speaker will not parse.

The six suffixes at a glance

Read the second column first when you are producing a sentence. If you are starting from a verb, only gachi, gimi and ppanashi are available to you. If you are starting from a noun, only gachi and gimi cross over, and darake, mamire and zukume are the noun-only three. Learners who memorise the meanings without the attachment column end up saying wasuremashita darake, which is not a possible Japanese word.

The third column is the part that decides which one a speaker picks when more than one is grammatical. Gachi is about how often, gimi is about how much, ppanashi is about a state nobody ended, darake and mamire are about coverage, and zukume is about a run of the same thing. Keep those five questions in mind and the choice becomes fast.

Gachi: the leaning you would rather not have

Gachi attaches to the masu stem of a verb: okuremasu gives okuregachi, wasuremasu gives wasuregachi, yasumimasu gives yasumigachi, hikimasu gives hikigachi. The result is a noun-like word, so it takes desu at the end of a sentence and na before a noun: wasuregachi na hito. To say the tendency has developed, add ni naru: saikin okuregachi ni natte imasu.

The meaning is a repeated leaning, and almost always one the speaker sees as a problem. That negative colouring is why kaze o hikigachi desu sounds like a complaint about your own body, while a purely good habit does not take gachi at all; nobody says jōzu ni narigachi desu. The clear exception is the weather forecast, where kumorigachi simply means mostly cloudy, and a handful of nouns of condition: byōki gachi, rusu gachi, enryo gachi.

Because gachi is about the pattern rather than the moment, it pairs naturally with saikin, itsumo and a plain non-past sentence. It does not pair with sukoshi, which is the fastest way to tell it apart from gimi in a listening test and in your own speech.

Gimi: a slight touch of something

Gimi is the noun kimi, written 気味, with a voiced first consonant when it attaches. It takes the same masu stem as gachi, and it also takes plenty of plain nouns: kaze gimi, kinchō gimi, tsukare gimi. The result again behaves like a noun, so kazegimi desu, kazegimi na node, tsukaregimi no kao.

The nuance is a small amount of a state that is present now. Kazegimi is not a cold, it is the feeling that one is starting. Futorigimi is not obesity, it is a waistband that has grown slightly tight. Okuregimi is not being late, it is being a few minutes behind where you should be. Because the meaning is already hedged, gimi is the polite way to report something mildly bad about yourself or, carefully, about someone else, and sukoshi or chotto in front of it makes it softer still.

Most gimi words describe something unwelcome, which is why sagarigimi for sales and agarigimi for a temperature sound natural while a purely happy state usually does not take it. Notice too that gimi describes the speaker's impression, so it is a safe way to comment on a colleague without asserting a fact: kinchō gimi deshita ne says they seemed a little nervous, not that they were.

Gachi against gimi in minimal pairs

These two share a stem in several high-frequency words, and swapping them changes the sentence from a habit to a symptom. Okuregachi desu tells your manager you have a punctuality problem. Okuregimi desu tells them the train is a few minutes behind. One is about you, the other is about today, and choosing wrongly can turn a status update into a confession.

The same split runs through the body vocabulary. Kaze o hikigachi desu says your immune system is unreliable, while kazegimi desu says you feel one starting this morning. Futorigachi desu says you gain weight easily as a matter of constitution, while futorigimi desu says you are carrying a little extra at the moment. Say both aloud until the pair feels like two different pieces of news.

Ppanashi: left exactly as it is

Ppanashi comes from hanasu, to release, and attaches to the masu stem with a small tsu: tsukemasu gives tsukeppanashi, dashimasu gives dashippanashi, akemasu gives akeppanashi, okimasu gives okippanashi. The result is a noun, so you meet it as ppanashi desu, ppanashi ni suru for the act of leaving something that way, ppanashi de for the accompanying circumstance, and ppanashi no in front of a noun.

With a transitive verb the meaning is neglect: someone did the action and then failed to undo it. Denki o tsukeppanashi ni shita means the light went on and nobody turned it off, and the sentence carries a mild reproach that te iru does not. Denki ga tsuite imasu is a neutral report that the light is on; denki o tsukeppanashi desu says it should have been switched off. That difference in blame is the whole reason the suffix exists.

Because it is built from a stem, you cannot use it with a noun. Mado ga akeppanashi desu is fine, since akeru is a verb, but there is no noun-based version, and learners sometimes try to attach it to a state noun. Keep it to actions somebody performed and then abandoned.

Ppanashi for something that never stops

The same suffix on an intransitive verb loses the blame and means continuously, without a break. Tachippanashi is standing the whole time, furippanashi is raining without let-up, narippanashi is ringing non-stop. Here the sentence is usually a complaint about endurance rather than about carelessness, and a duration phrase such as ichinichi-jū or asa kara sits comfortably in front of it.

This is the sense that turns up most in ordinary conversation about a hard day, and it is worth having ready because the alternatives are clumsy. Zutto tatte imashita is grammatical but flat; Tōkyō made tachippanashi deshita puts the whole crowded journey into one word. Note that the polite frame stays on the outside, so the sentence is as formal or casual as its ending, not as its suffix.

Darake and mamire: covered in it

Both attach to nouns only, and both mean covered, but they cover differently. Mamire wants a substance that sticks to a surface: ase, doro, chi, abura, hokori, suna. You end up mamire, so it very often appears as mamire ni naru after physical work or sport, and mamire no in front of the thing that got dirty.

Darake is wider. It coats, like doro darake, but it also counts, which mamire cannot do: machigai darake for a page full of errors, kizu darake for a body full of scratches, shorui darake for a buried desk, shakkin darake for a life full of debts. Whatever it attaches to is unwelcome, so a room full of flowers is hana de ippai, never hana darake. Where both are possible, mamire is the wetter and more physical of the two.

One idiom crosses the line worth knowing: shakkin mamire is common and means drowning in debt, slightly more dramatic than shakkin darake. Treat it as a set phrase rather than a licence to attach mamire to abstract nouns generally.

Zukume: nothing but that

Zukume attaches to a noun and means made up entirely of that one thing. It is the least productive of the six, living mostly in set combinations, so learn the members rather than the rule: kurozukume for an outfit that is black from head to toe, ii koto zukume for a run of nothing but good news, gochisō zukume for a table of one treat after another, kiroku zukume for a season of records, kisoku zukume for a place hemmed in by rules.

Unlike the others, zukume is often positive, which makes ii koto zukume the phrase to reach for when someone asks how a year went. It has a slightly written, slightly newsreader flavour, so it sounds a little more formal than darake even in speech. When you are unsure whether a noun accepts it, use bakari instead, which is unrestricted: ii koto bakari deshita says nearly the same thing with no risk.

The neighbouring patterns learners confuse

Three other endings sit close to this family. Yasui on a masu stem means easy to do or prone to happening, and it is neutral about frequency: machigaeyasui ji is a character that is easy to get wrong, whether or not you keep getting it wrong. Gachi says you actually do keep getting it wrong. Sugiru means the amount passed the acceptable line, so tabesugimashita reports an event, while tabegimi is not something a speaker says at all.

Bakari overlaps with both zukume and ppanashi. Gēmu bakari shite imasu means doing nothing but that, and where zukume is restricted to fixed nouns, bakari attaches freely, which makes it the safe fallback. None of these blocks the others, and the suffixes can stack: terebi o tsukeppanashi ni shigachi desu is a perfectly natural sentence about a habit of leaving the television on.

Mistakes to avoid

• Attaching a noun-only suffix to a verb. Wasureta darake is not Japanese; the noun version is machigai darake.
• Using the dictionary form before gachi or gimi. Both take the masu stem, so it is okuregachi and okuregimi, never okurugachi.
• Putting sukoshi in front of gachi. Gachi counts occasions, not amounts, so sukoshi belongs with gimi.
• Praising someone with gachi. It carries a negative shade, so a compliment needs yoku plus the plain verb instead.
• Dropping the small tsu in ppanashi. It is tsukeppanashi and dashippanashi, with the pause you can hear.
• Attaching mamire to something countable. Sweat, mud and oil take mamire; mistakes and scratches take darake.
• Treating zukume as productive. Stay with the set phrases such as ii koto zukume and kurozukume, and use bakari for everything else.