[I found this great comment from years and years ago about “hint words”](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1neitx/how_do_you_say_if_in_japanese/cchv8n1/):
>Japanese has a bunch of “hint words” that you put at the beginning that kind of signify that you’re going to conjugate the end. The “if” hint word is もし. Put that at the beginning of the clause and it functions as an English “if”.
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>まるで/どうやら are the “hint word” if you’re going to finish a sentence with よう/みたい
>きっと/さぞ are the “hint word” if you’re going to finish a sentence with だろう/でしょう
Since reading it, I can’t stop noticing these patterns popping up everywhere (heck there’s a まるで/よう combo [in today’s daily thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/108phit/daily_thread_simple_questions_comments_that_dont/j3u6qrs/)). It really brought clarity to what these “hint words” mean knowing that they function in a larger context.
Are there any other patterns like this that people have noticed?
6 comments
GREAT thread idea. I can only think of one rn, which is that conditional phrases like もし/ 仮に will usually have a ばorも, or some other followup conditional like たら (especially としたら)
For example,「**もし**貴様がスパイ**だったら**、敵に正体を暴かれた時はどうする？」Or しかし、**もし**宮田伍長が憲兵隊内部の裏切り者の調査をしていたの**だとしたら**、事件を全く別の側面から考える必要が出てくる。
These are just two random examples I searched from ジョーカーゲーム(great book, btw)
jay rubin’s “making sense of japanese” book has a few really good examples of these. along with those mentioned, he also brings up ones like なぜならーからだ, ただーだけ, たとえーても, and あるいはーかもしれない.
would highly recommend reading the book in its entirety, fantastic resource for shifting the mindset with which you view the japanese language, particularly as an english native speaker.
ぜひ often precedes a phrase ending in 下さい
There are lots of these patterns and pairings. Decent grammar dictionaries will point them out.
恐らく/ひょっとして/もしかしたら~かも知れない comes to mind.
Probably not what you are looking for, nevertheless could be interesting to some.
In 和歌 waka poetry (waka is like haiku/senryuu, except the latter is 5-7-5 while waka is 5-7-5-7-7), there is a group of phrases called 枕詞 makurakotoba (lit. “pillow words”). [EN wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makurakotoba) [JP wiki](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9E%95%E8%A9%9E)
These makurakotoba phrases are most of the time 5 syllables/mora, and thus usually take up the first 5 syllables of the waka. What these makurakotoba do is that they are each associated with certain words or concepts.
So for examples, あしびきの is associated with 山、峰、尾の上; ひさかたの is associated with 天、雨、月、雲、空、光、etc; 天(あま)の原(はら) is associated with ふりさけ見る、富士. When you use these makurakotoba, the reader expects one of those associated words to follow. (You can find other examples in the wiki links above, esp the JP one.)
Example poems using them:
>**あしびきの 山**鳥の尾の しだり尾の ながながし夜を ひとりかも寝む — by 柿本人麻呂(百人一首３番/『拾遺集』恋３・773)
>**ひさかたの 光**のどけき 春の日に 静心なく 花の散るらむ — by 紀友則(百人一首33番/『古今集』春下・84)
>**あまのはら ふりさけ見れ**ば 春日なる 三笠の山に 出でし月かも — by 安倍仲麿(百人一首7番/『古今集』羇旅・406)
This makurakotoba is one of the four literary devices in waka, the other three being 掛詞(kakekotoba/puns), 縁語(engo/words that are closely related), 序詞(jokotoba/”preface word (idk how to explain this)”).
I think they are called “呼応の副詞” in Japanese. And I’ve seen “guiding adverb” as a translation.
There is a partial list [here](https://www.kokugobunpou.com/%E6%B4%BB%E7%94%A8%E3%81%AE%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84%E8%87%AA%E7%AB%8B%E8%AA%9E/%E5%89%AF%E8%A9%9E-2-%E7%A8%AE%E9%A1%9E) (the table さまざまな呼応の副詞)