Furigana

Furigana (振り仮名, Japanese pronunciation: [ɸɯɾigaꜜna] or [ɸɯɾigana]) is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana (syllabic characters) printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known as yomigana (読み仮名) and rubi (ルビ, [ɾɯꜜbi]) in Japanese. In modern Japanese, it is usually used to gloss rare kanji, to clarify rare, nonstandard or ambiguous kanji readings, or in children's or learners' materials. Before the post-World War II script reforms, it was more widespread.^[1]

Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though in certain cases it may be written in katakana, Roman alphabet letters or in other, simpler kanji. In vertical text, tategaki, the furigana is placed to the right of the line of text; in horizontal text, yokogaki, it is placed above the line of text, as illustrated below.

日	に
本	ほん
語	ご

or

に	ほん	ご
日	本	語

These examples spell the word nihongo, which is made up of three kanji characters: 日 (ni, written in hiragana as に), 本 (hon, written in hiragana as ほん) and 語 (go, written in hiragana as ご).

^ Geoffrey Sampson (1990). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. Stanford University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4.

[Sampson1990-1] Geoffrey Sampson (1990). Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. Stanford University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4.

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