Some verbs have consonant-final stems followed by vowel-initial suffixes, but this fact is not apparent in the written language. In the examples in Table 1, the verb stem means ‘move’ and it ends in a consonant, /k/. The suffixes all begin with vowels, but the red kana characters do not reveal the boundary between verb and suffix.
Table 1
Japanese kana and the obscuration of morpheme boundaries.
 |  | move (plain form) |
 |  | move (polite form) |
 |  | does not move |
 |  | can move |
| | | move (plain form) |
| | | move (polite form) |
| | | does not move |
| | | can move |