Furigana [振り仮名] are small hiragana letters that appear above or beside the kanji to facilitate reading. These small letters show the correct way to pronounce each kanji. In this article, we will talk a little about Furigana and explain how to add these small letters to your texts to make reading easier.
The word furigana [振り仮名] comes from the verb furu [振る] + gana (kana) which indicates characters or Japanese letters such as katakana and hiragana. Other alternative names are rubi [ルビ] and also yomigana [読み仮名] which means reading kana.
The verb furu means many things such as to shake, to fuse, to allocate, to abandon, to add, to extract, to substitute, and to change. This can well explain why furu indicates the addition of a kana or hiragana in the text.
Furikanji – The opposite case also occurs. Foreign words or those written in hiragana can have a small kanji indicating their meaning just like furigana. It rarely happens, but it is an interesting fact to mention.
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When does furigana appear in Japanese?
Some imagine that furigana is something extra that people add, but it often appears naturally in texts, even for adults, depending on their needs.
Furigana mainly appears when a text has a rare word that even a normal adult would not easily remember. The more childish the text, the more furigana you will find, but the more mature the text, the less furigana it will have.
Of course, there are mature texts that sometimes share a technical word from a certain area that not everyone knows how to read. In these cases, you will indeed find the reading in furigana. Others even use it to indicate synonyms of a word.
Another occasion where furigana is present is when words are written ambiguously, words with different pronunciations but written with the same kanji. Furigana is not always necessary; often the context makes the reading of these words clear.
Furigana can appear in words with kanji that have a foreign reading. Sometimes we find country names written in katakana as a furigana for a word in kanji. Example: Brazil [伯剌西爾 (ブラジル)].
Consequences of using Furigana
Just like Romaji, using furigana has several consequences for Japanese learners. They can help you read any text easily, but this will slow down your reading. When you know the kanji, you quickly read the word instead of forcing your eyes to see the tiny hiragana.
Some think that furigana can help a person learn readings of ideograms, but it is not always useful. It is easier to take the kanji and paste it into a program instead of an entire text; it all depends on the level you are at in the Japanese language.
Many used Romaji to facilitate reading texts in Japanese, but romanization is a downfall for Japanese learners who have already mastered hiragana. Therefore, we encourage always using furigana, and in moderation, to study Japanese and not romaji (Roman letters).
How to add Furigana to texts with kanji
Furigana is commonly found in karaoke songs and in some books. Unfortunately, there are many texts that do not have furigana natively, but there are several programs and websites that allow you to transform your kanji text into a text with furigana, greatly facilitating your learning. Just click on the title to access the program’s website.
One of the major problems with using these generators is that they do not always provide the correct reading of a particular kanji. For example, I use an app called furigana that always puts hou [方] on the kanji when its reading is gata. So be careful if you want to rely on these programs, but they always get it right when the word is usually accompanied by other ideograms.
Furigana Generator –This site converts any text in kanji and takes you to a page with it in furigana, allowing you to save it as a .odt file to be opened with Open Office.
Furiganizer – Like the previous site, in addition to converting, it also saves as .doc to open in Office.
Tatoeba – Another site with the same purpose, in addition, it also converts to romaji.
Converter For Android -With the above application, it is possible to convert kanji or text to [振り仮名] directly from your Android phone.
Hiragana Megane – This site allows you to transform Japanese websites into sites with readings above the kanji.
IPA furigana –This plugin for Google Chrome allows you to add it to texts.
Furigana Inserter – This plugin for Firefox allows you to add kana to texts in kanji. It automatically inserts it into words from any site.
Okurigana – Unlike FuriGana or FuriKanji, Okurigana is part of the Japanese language and refers to the hiragana that are attached to a word with kanji, in this case, they are the hiragana of verbs or complements that inflect adjectives and others.
What do you think about Furigana?
These were some of the programs and sites that I recommend for you to use… I hope you liked the tips, if you did, don’t forget to share and leave your comments.
Furigana is very useful, especially when searching for Japanese song lyrics to sing. To make it easier, we recommend reading our article with tips for finding Japanese song lyrics.
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