Furigana [振り仮名] are small hiragana letters that sit on top of or beside the kanji for easier reading. These small letters show the correct way to pronounce each kanji. In this article, we are going to talk a little about Furigana and explain how to add these small letters to your texts to make them easier to read.
The word Okurigana [振り仮名] comes from the verb furu [振る] + wins (kana) which indicates Japanese characters or 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 it means many things like shake, merge, allocate, drop, add, extract, replace and change. That might well explain why furu indicates the addition of a kana or hiragana to the text.
Furikanji – The opposite case also occurs. Foreign words or words written in hiragana may 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 think furigana is something extra that people add, but it often appears naturally in texts, even for adults, depending on their need.
Furigana mainly appears when a text has a rare word, which even a normal adult would not be able to easily remember. The more childish the text, the more furigana you 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 find yes reading in furigana. Others even use it to indicate synonyms of a word.
Another occasion where furigana is present is when words are spelled 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 kanji words with a foreign reading. Sometimes we find country names written in katakana as a furigana of a kanji word. Example: Brazil [伯剌西爾 (ブラジル)].
Consequences of using Furigana
Like Romaji, using furigana has several consequences for students of Japanese. They can help you to easily read any text, but it will slow you down. When you know the kanji, you quickly read the word rather than straining your eyes to see the tiny hiragana.
Some think that furigana can help a person to learn ideogram readings, but not without it is helpful. It's easier for you to take the kanji and paste it into the program instead of a whole text, it all depends on what level you are in the Japanese language.
Many used Romaji to make reading Japanese texts easier, but romanization is a doom for Japanese students who already master hiragana. That's why we encourage you to always use furigana, and in moderation, to study Japanese and not romaji (Roman letters).
How to add Furigana in kanji texts
Furigana is often found in karaoke songs and in some books. Unfortunately, there are many texts that do not have furi natively, but there are several programs and websites that allow you to transform your kanji text into a furigana text, making your learning much easier. Just click on the title to access the program website.
One of the big problems with using these generators is that they don't always give the correct reading of a certain kanji. For example, I use an APP called furigana that always puts hou [方] in the kanji, when its reading is cat. So be careful if you want to depend 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 into kanji, and takes you to a page with it in furigana, allowing you to save it to a file.odt and be opened with open office.
Furiganizer - Just like the previous site, in addition to converting, it still saves as .doc to open in the office.
Tatoeba - Another site with the same goal, moreover it also converts to romaji.
Convert To Android -With the above app, you can convert kanji or text to [振り仮名] right from your android phone.
Hiragana Megane - This site allows you to turn Japanese sites into sites that read over kanji.
furigana IPA -This plugin for Google Chrome, allows you to put in texts.
Furigana Inserter - This Firefox plugin allows you to put kana in kanji texts. It automatically inserts into words from any website.
Okurigana – Unlike FuriGana or FuriKanji, Okurigana is part of the Japanese language and refers to hiraganas that are joined to a word with kanji, in this case they are the hiragana of verbs, or complements that inflect adjectives and others.
The article is still halfway through, but we recommend also reading:
What do you think about Furigana?
These were some of the programs and websites I recommend for you to use... I hope you liked the tips, if you liked it don't forget to share and leave your comments.
Furigana is very useful, especially when searching for Japanese lyrics to sing. To make it easier, we recommend reading our article with tips for finding Japanese song lyrics.
