Furigana (Japanese: ふりがな), are a Japanese reading aid. They consist of smaller kana printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line of text, as illustrated below. They are one type of ruby text. Furigana are also known as yomigana or rubi in Japanese. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 â–¶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... Pronunciation refers to: the way a word or a language is usually spoken; the manner in which someone utters a word. ... Nihongo (meaning Japanese language), written vertically in kanji Yokogaki (横書き, horizontal writing) and tategaki (縦書き, vertical writing) are two systems of Japanese writing. ... Nihongo (meaning Japanese language), written vertically in kanji Yokogaki (横書き, horizontal writing) and tategaki (縦書き, vertical writing) are two systems of Japanese writing. ... Ruby characters, also called ruby, rubi or furigana, are sometimes used in the typography of ideographic languages, especially Japanese and Chinese. ...

Appearance

Furigana may be added by character, in which case the part of a word which corresponds to a kanji is centered over that kanji; or by word or phrase, in which case the entire furigana word is centered over several characters, even if the kanji do not represent equal shares of the kana needed to write them. The latter method is more common, especially since some words in Japanese have unique pronunciations that are not related to any of the characters the word is written with. Ateji (当て字 ) guessed characters are Kanji selected to write a borrowed non-Chinese or native Japanese word with the intent of implying an etymology, which is fanciful or false. ...

When it is necessary to distinguish between native Japanese kun'yomi and Chinese-derived on'yomi pronunciations, for example in kanji dictionaries, the Japanese pronunciations are written in hiragana, and the Chinese ones are written in katakana. However, this distinction is really only important in dictionaries and other reference works. In ordinary prose, the script chosen will usually be hiragana. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 ▶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 ▶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Category Hiragana (平仮名 literally smooth kana) are a Japanese syllabary, one of four Japanese writing systems (the others are katakana, kanji and rōmaji). ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Katakana (片仮名) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Category Hiragana (平仮名 literally smooth kana) are a Japanese syllabary, one of four Japanese writing systems (the others are katakana, kanji and rōmaji). ...

The distinction between regular kana and the smaller character forms, which are used in regular orthography to mark such things as gemination and palatalization, is often not made in furigana: for example, the usual hiragana spelling of the word 却下 (kyakka) is きゃっか, but in furigana it might be written きやつか. This was especially common in old-fashioned movable type printing when smaller fonts were not available. Nowadays, with computer-based printing systems, this occurs less frequently. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Category Hiragana (平仮名 literally smooth kana) are a Japanese syllabary, one of four Japanese writing systems (the others are katakana, kanji and rōmaji). ... The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ...

Usage

Furigana are most commonly used in works for children, who may not have sufficiently advanced reading skills to recognise the kanji, but can understand the word when written phonetically in hiragana. Because children learn hiragana before katakana, in books for very young children, there are hiragana furigana next to the katakana characters. It is common to use furigana on all kanji characters in works for young children. This is called sōrubi (総ルビ) in Japanese. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 Category Hiragana (平仮名 literally smooth kana) are a Japanese syllabary, one of four Japanese writing systems (the others are katakana, kanji and rōmaji). ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Katakana (片仮名) are a Japanese syllabary, one of the four Japanese writing systems. ...

In works aimed at adult Japanese speakers, furigana may be used on a word written in uncommon kanji; in the mass media, they are generally used on words containing non-Jōyō kanji. It has been suggested that Learning kanji be merged into this article or section. ...

For names

Japanese names are usually written in kanji. Because there are many possible readings for kanji names, including special name-only readings called nanori, furigana are often used to give the readings of names. On Japanese official forms, where the name is to be written, there is always an adjacent column for the name to be written in furigana. Usually katakana is preferred. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Category Kanji (漢字 ▶(?), literally Han characters) is the name of Chinese characters in the Japanese language. ... In the Japanese language many names are constructed from common kanji characters with standard spelling and pronunciation. ...

Furigana may also be used for Chinese or Korean names when written in kanji, or for a Westerner who has chosen to represent his or her name in kanji, such as activist Arudou Debito, who writes his name 有道出人 in kanji. Arudou Debito Arudou Debito (有道 出人), a naturalized Japanese citizen born in the United States, is a teacher, author and activist who is known for fighting for human rights and the rights of foreigners in Japan. ...

In language learning

Kanji and kanji compounds are often presented with furigana in Japanese language textbooks for non-native speakers.

Furigana are also often used in foreign language textbooks for Japanese learners to indicate pronunciation. The words are written in the original foreign script, such as Hangul for Korean, and furigana is used to indicate the pronunciation. Hangul (hangul: 한글; revised: hangeul; McCune-Reischauer: hangŭl) is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language, as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China. ...

Punning and double meaning

Some writers use furigana to represent slang pronunciations, particularly those which would become hard to understand without the kanji to provide their meaning.

Another use is to write the kanji for something which had been previously referenced, but write furigana for "sore" or "are", meaning "that", indicating that the characters simply refer to it with a pronoun, but clarifying for the reader what thing was meant.

In karaoke it is extremely common for furigana to be placed on the song lyrics. The song lyrics are often written in kanji pronounced quite differently from the furigana. The furigana version is used for pronunciation. A Karaoke machine Karaoke (Japanese: カラオケ, from 空 kara, empty, and オーケストラ ōkesutora, orchestra) is a form of entertainment where recorded music accompanies an amateur singer who sings along with the accompaniment on microphone. ...

Also, because the kanji represent meaning while the furigana represent sound, one can combine the two to create puns or indicate meanings of foreign words. One might write the kanji for "blue", but use katakana to write the pronunciation of the English word "blue", thus using an English word while providing its meaning. Double meanings using furigana can also be seen quite often in works of fiction. For example, the word "Earth" (chikyuu) can be written with "homeland" (furusato) as the reading in a work of science fiction. The Japanese translations of Harry Potter use this to translate puns while retaining their meaning, and to translate some words like "Firebolt" which are proper nouns, but whose meaning should not be disregarded. A pun (also known as paronomasia) is a figure of speech which consists of a deliberate confusion of similar words or phrases for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. ... Cover of the original novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. ...

Furigana can be used to associate a Japanese word with a foreign pronunciation of the same concept. For example, the kanji 超, chō, could have スーパー ("super") written in furigana which is the loose English translation. This is usually seen in Japanese subtitles on foreign films to better associate the written Japanese with the sounds actually being heard in the film.

Other Japanese reading aids

Kunten

In the written style known as kanbun, which is the Japanese approximation of Classical Chinese, small marks called kunten are sometimes added as reading aids. Unlike furigana, which indicate pronunciation, kunten indicate Japanese grammatical structures absent from the kanbun, as well as showing how words should be reordered to fit Japanese sentence structure. Example of Kaeriten Kanbun (漢文, literally Han writing) is Chinese written for a Japanese audience. ... Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of Zhou Dynasty Chinese, making it very different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. ... Example of Kaeriten Kanbun (漢文, literally Han writing) is Chinese written for a Japanese audience. ...

Furikanji

Furigana are sometimes also used to indicate meaning, rather than pronunciation. Over the foreign text smaller sized Japanese words, in kana or kanji, corresponding to the meaning of the foreign words, effectively translate it in place. While rare now, some late 19th - early 20th century authors used kanji as furigana for loanwords written in katakana. This usage is called furikanji (振り漢字) in Japanese, since furigana implies the use of kana. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken into by one language from another. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Romaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ...

External links

Pictures of various types of furigana from Dai Nippon Printing.