Furigana
Encyclopedia
is a Japanese
reading aid, consisting of smaller kana
, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji
(ideographic character) 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. It is one type of ruby text
. Furigana are also known as or in Japanese.
Furigana fonts are generally sized so that two kana characters fit naturally over one kanji; when more kana are required, this is resolved either by adjusting the furigana by using a condensed font (narrowing the kana), or by adjusting the kanji by intercharacter spacing (adding spaces around the kanji). In case an isolated character has a long reading—for example 〜に携わる (reading たずさ)—the furigana may instead spill over into the space next to the two neighboring characters, without condensing or changing spacing. Three kana readings are not uncommon, particularly due to yōon
with a long vowel, such as , and five kana are required for and .
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
. The one general exception to this is modern Chinese place names, personal names, and (occasionally) food names—these will often be written with kanji, and katakana used for the furigana; in more casual writing these are simply written in katakana, as borrowed words.
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 (kyakka) is , but in furigana it might be written . 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.
Furigana are most commonly used in works for children, who may not have sufficiently advanced reading skills to recognize 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 in Japanese.
There are also a lot of children's and shōnen
manga
that use furigana. There are also books with a phonetic guide (mainly in Hiragana
but sometimes in Romaji) for Japanese learners, which may be bilingual or Japanese only, they are popular with foreigners, wishing to master Japanese faster and enjoy reading Japanese short-stories, novels or articles.
Some web sites and tools exist, which provide a phonetic guide in Japanese web pages (in Hiragana, Romaji or Kiriji
), they are popular both with Japanese children and foreign Japanese learners.
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
.
Furigana commonly appear alongside kanji names and their romanizations on signs for railway stations, even if the pronunciation of the kanji is commonly known. Furigana also appear often on maps to show the pronunciation of unusual place names.
In Japan, by law, newspapers using kanji outside the jōyō kanji
list must annotate them with furigana.
s 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.
Furigana may also be used for foreign names written in kanji. Chinese and Korean names are the most common examples: Chinese names are usually pronounced with Japanese readings and the pronunciation written in hiragana, while Korean names are usually pronounced with Korean readings and the pronunciation written in katakana. Furigana may also be necessary in the rare case where names are transliterated into kanji from other languages (e.g. soccer star Ruy Ramos
and politician Marutei Tsurunen
.)
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.
Another use is to write the kanji for something which had been previously referenced, but write furigana for "" or "" , meaning "that". This means that the actual word used was the 'that', but the kanji clarify for the reader what the 'that' means.
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.
Also, because the kanji represent meaning while the furigana represent sound, one can combine the two to create pun
s 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"; this may be done, for example, in Japanese subtitles on foreign films, where it can help associate the written Japanese with the sounds actually being spoken by the actors, or it may be used in a translation of a work of fiction to enable the translator to preserve the original sound of a proper name (such as "Firebolt" in the Harry Potter series) in furigana, while simultaneously indicating its meaning with kanji. A similar practice is used in native fiction to clarify extended meanings. For example, in a work of science fiction, some astronaut could use the word "my hometown" referring to planet Earth. To clarify that for the reader, the word "furusato" (hometown) might be written in hiragana over the kanji for "chikyuu" (Earth).
, 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.
s written in katakana. This usage is called in Japanese, since furigana implies the use of kana
.
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
reading aid, consisting of smaller kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
(ideographic character) or other character to indicate its pronunciation
Pronunciation
Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
. In horizontal text, yokogaki
Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts can be oriented in either direction, as they consist mainly of disconnected syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space...
, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki
Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. The Chinese, Japanese and Korean scripts can be oriented in either direction, as they consist mainly of disconnected syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space...
, they are placed to the right of the line of text, as illustrated below. It is one type of ruby text
Ruby character
are small, annotative glosses that can be placed above or to the right of a Chinese character when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese or Japanese to show the pronunciation...
. Furigana are also known as or in Japanese.
| or |
Appearance
Furigana may be added by character, in which case the part of a word that 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 (jukujikun) that are not related to readings of any of the characters the word is written with.Furigana fonts are generally sized so that two kana characters fit naturally over one kanji; when more kana are required, this is resolved either by adjusting the furigana by using a condensed font (narrowing the kana), or by adjusting the kanji by intercharacter spacing (adding spaces around the kanji). In case an isolated character has a long reading—for example 〜に携わる (reading たずさ)—the furigana may instead spill over into the space next to the two neighboring characters, without condensing or changing spacing. Three kana readings are not uncommon, particularly due to yōon
Yoon
is a feature of the Japanese language in which a mora is formed with an added sound.Yōon are represented in hiragana using a kana ending in i, such as き , plus a smaller-than-usual version of one of the three y kana, ya, yu or yo. For example kyō, "today", is written きょう, using a small version of...
with a long vowel, such as , and five kana are required for and .
When it is necessary to distinguish between native Japanese kun'yomi and Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
-derived on'yomi pronunciations, for example in Kanji dictionaries, the Japanese pronunciations are written in hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
, and the Chinese ones are written in katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
. However, this distinction is really only important in dictionaries and other reference works. In ordinary prose, the script chosen will usually be hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
. The one general exception to this is modern Chinese place names, personal names, and (occasionally) food names—these will often be written with kanji, and katakana used for the furigana; in more casual writing these are simply written in katakana, as borrowed words.
The distinction between regular kana and the smaller character forms, which are used in regular orthography to mark such things as gemination
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
and palatalization
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
, is often not made in furigana: for example, the usual hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
spelling of the word (kyakka) is , but in furigana it might be written . This was especially common in old-fashioned movable type
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
printing when smaller fonts were not available. Nowadays, with computer-based printing systems, this occurs less frequently.
Usage
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
. Because children learn hiragana before katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
, 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 in Japanese.
There are also a lot of children's and shōnen
Shonen
The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...
manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
that use furigana. There are also books with a phonetic guide (mainly in Hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
but sometimes in Romaji) for Japanese learners, which may be bilingual or Japanese only, they are popular with foreigners, wishing to master Japanese faster and enjoy reading Japanese short-stories, novels or articles.
Some web sites and tools exist, which provide a phonetic guide in Japanese web pages (in Hiragana, Romaji or Kiriji
Cyrillization of Japanese
Cyrillization of Japanese is the practice of expressing Japanese sounds using Cyrillic characters. It is commonly accepted in Russia.Below is a cyrillization system for the Japanese language known as the Yevgeny Polivanov system...
), they are popular both with Japanese children and foreign Japanese learners.
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
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
.
Furigana commonly appear alongside kanji names and their romanizations on signs for railway stations, even if the pronunciation of the kanji is commonly known. Furigana also appear often on maps to show the pronunciation of unusual place names.
In Japan, by law, newspapers using kanji outside the jōyō kanji
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
list must annotate them with furigana.
Names
Japanese nameJapanese name
in modern times usually consist of a family name , followed by a given name. "Middle names" are not generally used.Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters of usually Chinese origin in Japanese pronunciation...
s are usually written in kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
. Because there are many possible readings for kanji names, including special name-only readings called nanori
Nanori
are kanji character readings found almost exclusively in Japanese names.In the Japanese language many names are constructed from common kanji characters with standard pronunciations. However, some characters occur only in names, and some standard characters have special pronunciations in names...
, 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.
Furigana may also be used for foreign names written in kanji. Chinese and Korean names are the most common examples: Chinese names are usually pronounced with Japanese readings and the pronunciation written in hiragana, while Korean names are usually pronounced with Korean readings and the pronunciation written in katakana. Furigana may also be necessary in the rare case where names are transliterated into kanji from other languages (e.g. soccer star Ruy Ramos
Ruy Ramos
, formerly Ruy Gonçalves Ramos Sobrinho , is a Brazilian-born football player, who became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1989. He was one of the first foreign players in Japanese professional soccer, joining Yomiuri in 1977 at the age of 20...
and politician Marutei Tsurunen
Marutei Tsurunen
is the first foreign-born Japanese of European origin serving as a member of the Diet of Japan. He is a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, where he serves as Director General of the International Department. He is currently serving in the House of Councillors.- Biography :Tsurunen was born...
.)
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
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
for Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, and furigana is used to indicate the pronunciation.
Punning and double meaning
Some writers use furigana to represent slang pronunciations, particularly those that 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 "" or "" , meaning "that". This means that the actual word used was the 'that', but the kanji clarify for the reader what the 'that' means.
In karaoke
Karaoke
is a form of interactive entertainment or video game in which amateur singers sing along with recorded music using a microphone and public address system. The music is typically a well-known pop song minus the lead vocal. Lyrics are usually displayed on a video screen, along with a moving symbol,...
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.
Also, because the kanji represent meaning while the furigana represent sound, one can combine the two to create pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s 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"; this may be done, for example, in Japanese subtitles on foreign films, where it can help associate the written Japanese with the sounds actually being spoken by the actors, or it may be used in a translation of a work of fiction to enable the translator to preserve the original sound of a proper name (such as "Firebolt" in the Harry Potter series) in furigana, while simultaneously indicating its meaning with kanji. A similar practice is used in native fiction to clarify extended meanings. For example, in a work of science fiction, some astronaut could use the word "my hometown" referring to planet Earth. To clarify that for the reader, the word "furusato" (hometown) might be written in hiragana over the kanji for "chikyuu" (Earth).
Okurigana
Okurigana are kana that appear inline at normal size following kanji stems, typically to complete and to inflect adjectives and verbs. In this use they may also help to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings; for example, 上がる (あがる, agaru) vs. 上る (のぼる, noboru). Unlike furigana, the use of okurigana is a mandatory part of the written language.Kunten
In the written style known as kanbunKanbun
The Japanese word originally meant "Classical Chinese writings, Chinese classic texts, Classical Chinese literature". This evolved into a Japanese method of reading annotated Classical Chinese in translation . Much Japanese literature was written in literary Chinese using this annotated style...
, which is the Japanese approximation of Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
, small marks called kunten
Künten
Künten is a municipality in the district of Baden in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. It lies on the Reuss River and includes the previously independent community of Sulz, which merged with Künten in 1973.-History:...
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.
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 loanwordLoanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s written in katakana. This usage is called in Japanese, since furigana implies the use of kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
.
External links
- Add Ruby automatically for Japanese Web site—Multi-language phonetic reading site that can add phonetic reading to any site or texts in five different alphabets, hiragana, katakana, Roman, hangul, Devanagari, and Cyrillic letters for Japanese.
- The Furiganizer is a convenient online reading aid for all kinds of Japanese text. It automatically adds Furigana, offers easy access to the EDICTEDICTThe JMdict/EDICT project was started by Jim Breen in 1991 with the aim to provide a machine-readable Japanese to English dictionary. Since that time it has been updated and expanded by many contributors. The dictionaries resulting from the project are simply text files; other programs are needed to...
dictionary, and learns interactively which kanji the user already knows. Furiganized results can be printed or exported to Microsoft Word.