かわいい 人 This sounds slightly like "kawaisou" instead of "kawaii hito", but the speaker is really saying "kawaii hito". — Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar flashcard

A cute person! kawaii: cute, adorable This is the second adjective type, the "i"-adjective. They have slightly different properties than "na"-adjectives. For example, they directly describe a noun; "na" is never used with them. You wouldn't say "kawaii na hito". Since they do not act as nouns, you can't add "da" either. So you can say: "taisetsu da" (because taisetsu is a noun + a na-adjective), but not "kawaii da", because kawaii is an i-adjective. The name comes from the fact that these words end on "i".