this man is facing a high chance of being homeless soon. he has a job, but had a medical emergency last month & issues with his transportation that kept him from being able to save up for moving like he planned. he has two cats to worry about as well.

As you progress with your Japanese studies, you will see two very important kinds of Hiragana. They are called furigana and okurigana. In this post let’s take a look at each of them and how they both help Japanese learners and natives read Kanji!

But first, let me introduce a chart for the vocabulary that you’ll see in this post. Each word is written in Kanji and then in Hiragana, with its part of speech and meaning.

1) Furigana

Furigana, also known as よみがな or ruby, are the Hiragana characters either on top or to the side of Kanji characters.

As you can see, if the writing is horizontal, the furigana will be on top and if the writing is vertical, it will be on the right side. Either way, furigana tell you how to pronounce the Kanji characters.

There may be anywhere from 1 to 5 Hiragana characters represented by a single Kanji character!

We Japanese learners need furigana when we start studying Kanji and reading Japanese text. But Japanese children also need furigana when they are learning Kanji and even Katakana. Here you can see furigana used to learn Katakana characters.

Whether or not you see furigana depends on a few different factors:

the intended readers

the rarity of the Kanji

Generally, you won’t see many examples of furigana. However, if you pick up a book/novel intended for elementary-aged children, you might see lots of furigana. This is because (like us!) they either haven’t learned the Kanji’s readings or the writer intended the Kanji to be read in a certain way.

Some websites, books, IG posts, Youtube videos, etc that are intended for non-Japanese readers will also have a fair amount of furigana. Granted, it is helpful at first, but it’s a good idea to wane yourself off of furigana as you get better (or if you WANT to get better). The more you see a Kanji character, the more likely you are to remember its reading.

Gikun

Sometimes furigana doesn’t actually tell you the reading of the Kanji. Instead it’s used to add details or add shades of nuance, as in the examples below:

In these cases we call the furigana gikun, which loosely translates to “a false reading”.

On the left, the Kanji reads 希望, which means “desire or wish” but the furigana reads ひかり, which means “light”. This conveys to the reader that light is a metaphor for hope in whatever setting you are seeing that Kanji. 

On the right, the Kanji reads ちきゅう, which means “Earth” but the furigana reads ふるさと which means “home town” or “where someone is from”. This tells the reader that someone is an Earthling – as compared to a Martian or an alien from another planet.

This is a more-advanced way that furigana is used, so you won’t see it unless you are reading manga or novels aimed for native speakers.

First the Word, Then the Kanji (Ateji & Jukujikun)

On the day that I arrived in Japan, they asked me for my name in Katakana at the airport. I hadn’t really thought about it so they wrote my name how it sounds to the Japanese ear.

A few days later, I was thinking about this, and it occurred to me that in the same way that they just “assigned me” katakana, I could also give myself Kanji for my name! My name is Albert but I took my nickname Al and “Hiraganized” it, getting ある. At this point I needed 1 or 2 Kanji that sounded out ある. I eventually decided on 亜琉. I’ll come back to this a bit later.

亜琉 is what is called ateji. I started with a word and “worked backwards” to end up with Kanji, based on their readings. Another example of ateji is the Japanese word for The United States. Written with Hiragana it’s あめりか, but written with Kanji it becomes:

亜 read as あ 米 read as め 利 read as り 加 read as か

Keep in mind that these Kanji have nothing to do with the meaning of “America” or “The U.S.” (whatever that is lol). They were only chosen based on the way you read each Kanji. This is the idea of ateji.

A similar concept is Jukujikun. The word あさって means “the day after tomorrow”. When it came time to assign Kanji to this word, the following 3 were chosen:

明 meaning “tomorrow” 後 meaning “after” 日 meaning “day”

You can reasonably see how this combination of Kanji can come to mean “the day after tomorrow”. The thing is, the actual way you read those Kanji are nowhere close to あさって！They were chosen because of their meanings and not their readings. It’s almost the reverse of ateji. 2 more examples are:

今日 is read as きょう but 今 is not きょ and 日 is not う

下手 is read as へた but 下 is not へ and 手 is not た

When it comes to jukujikun, because the furigana can’t be separated between the characters, it will appear either in the middle of the characters or stretched across them.

As for my Kanji, because the characters sound out ある, 亜琉 is ateji. However, I also chose 2 Kanji with meanings that I liked. 亜 means “Asia” and 琉 means “gem” so I chose my name to mean “gem of Asia”.

2) Okurigana

Now, let’s talk about okurigana. It is similar to furigana, except that it only appears next to Kanji. Okurigana is thought of as “hanging off of” Kanji characters.

The okurigana tells you how you should read the 食 Kanji. In this particular example, both words mean “to eat” so mixing them up is not the end of the world (depending on who you are talking with!). Other times, however, the meanings will be drastically different so okurigana is a vital part of Japanese.

Adjectives and Verbs

Most of the time, you’ll find okurigana with adjective and verb forms. This is because they have a core part (called the stem) that will not change, and an ending that changes to add different shades of nuance to the core meaning. Think of the difference between “kick”, “kicks”, and “kicked” in English.

Notice that sometimes the adjective or verb stem doesn’t overlap with the okurigana (Type 1). Other times, part of the stem is included in the okurigana (Type 2). The main thing to remember is, the okurigana is the Hiragana after the Kanji.

Another time you will see okurigana is with compound verbs. This is where two verbs are combined into one. In these cases, there will be okurigana both between and after Kanji characters. Examples are:

思い出す, which means “to remember” 食べ残す, which means “to leave food half-eaten”

Nouns

Most of the time, nouns are made up of only Kanji. However, there are some occasions where they will have okurigana. Most times, they will end in a character from the い VSG.

This is because they actually come from verbs! Here are some examples:

匂い (from 匂う) 好き (from 好く) ーーーーーーーーーー 乗り場 (from 乗る) 立ち飲み (from both 立つ and 飲む)

Other times, they aren’t derived from verbs, they are just simply nouns:

勢い, which means “force, power” 後ろ, which means “behind, rear” 全て, which means “all, everything” 情け, which means “pity, sympathy” 斜め, which means “diagonal, slanted”

Same Kanji, Different Okurigana

The function of okurigana is to point you in the right direction of how to pronounce a given Kanji. There would be no reason for this if each Kanji had only 1 possible reading. As it turns out, a single Kanji can have many different ways to say it. Here are some examples:

As you can see, depending on the okurigana, 汚 can be read as きたな or as よご. On the other hand, the Kanji 広 is read as ひろ in all 5 of those words! For this reason, I would recommend learning Kanji like 広 early in your studies.  It will be much easier for you to remember a Kanji with only 1 or 2 readings than a Kanji with many different readings.

Same Kanji, Same Okurigana

It’s rare, but there are times when the okurigana unfortunately won’t tell you decisively how to pronounce the Kanji. Here is an example:

As you can see (with the help of the furigana!) BOTH the Kanji and the okurigana are the same, making them different words but homographs. If it weren’t for the furigana, you might not know which reading of the kanji to use. In this situation, they both mean “to open” but the way and the kind of opening is different. Japanese often separates very similar meanings by using different Kanji. In English, we just take it for granted that you can open your eyes and you can also open a door. In Japanese, they are two different kinds of actions, and so different Kanji are used. (It won’t matter when you speak, but when you write or type, it would be good to be aware of the difference.) In these kinds of cases, you will have to rely on either context or on furigana to know which reading is correct.

Conclusion

As you can see, both furigana and okurigana will help you when it comes to reading Kanji. Sometimes you will have both, other times there will only be okurigana. Later on in the Kanji section, we will take a look at other ways to help you guess a Kanji’s reading. Until then, good luck with your Japanese journey!

And with that, you are finished with the Hiragana section. Congrats!

Rice & Peace,

– 亜琉 (アル)

(Note: With this post I just want to share thoughts and tips based on my own experiences and observations. If you have a different opinion that's fine. Language learning is an very individual process. Everyone has different goals and preferences. Try different things and do what works best for you.) Reading is an effective way to increase your vocabulary. But the really interesting books are often very difficult for a language learner (especially if you have little to no experience with native level books). Looking at a page full of unknown words can be intimidating. And if it’s a physical book, reading even a few pages takes ages if you need to look up many words. Reading texts above your current level can be slow and difficult.

From time to time I see language learners who tend to avoid books for natives and keep studying from textbooks or apps to “prepare“ themselves until they are “ready“. And I understand their decision. Textbooks and language learning apps provide structure and present the language in manageable chunks. They are an important first step and they can be a great resource for intermediate learners. Please use them to learn the basics and as a reference but keep in mind that they can only get you to a certain level. It’s obvious, but books for native speakers are not written with language test levels in mind (in the case of Japanese the JLPT). A book for natives can contain words of all levels. For example: The language used in books for a young audience is usually easier than for adults, but even books for kids can contain words that are not in your textbook. On the other hand, novels for adults contain not only abstract and specialized words but also many common words you probably already know. To put it simply: There are no strict levels in the "wild". That’s why you need to learn to deal with the language outside of textbooks. These resources help but they just can’t teach you everything. I mean, it would be extremely unrealistic to expect that you just need to study enough textbooks or completing all levels of your language learning app and then you are able to understand any novel for adult natives without look ups. If you want to learn to read at the level of an adult native speaker, you need to face this challenge and start reading these books at some point — and I mean many of them. No matter how much you prepared yourself through textbooks and apps, you will run into a ton of new words and phrases. This is intimidating at first, but there’s no way around it. You learn simply as you go by trying your best to understand and looking up words, phrases and grammar points. If you are only used to textbooks and apps, it’s absolutely normal that you struggle for quite some time. Don't worry! It gets easier the more you expose yourself with content for native speakers.

What is intimidating today will feel normal for you in the future. Keep going, don’t fear challenges, be open minded and take your time — and you will be able to tackle more and more difficult content.

Tips and recommendations

I myself am at a point where I’ve read around 100 books in Japanese. Many of them were manga, the rest were light novels, novels and a few non-fiction books. The level of difficulty of these books varies. I started with easier books and tried to read more and more challenging ones. I also regularly play video games in Japanese. A few examples:

Manga

名探偵コナン (has full furigana, it’s quite challenging but you’ll learn a ton of expressions and words from a wide range of real wold topics, strongly recommend it)

ナルト (typical battle shonen manga, full furigana, much easier than コナン)

Silver Spoon (full furigana, lots of specialized vocab and therefore difficult, but also very fun)

バクマン (one of my favorites, very enjoyable but also difficult)

らんま 1/2 (I love this series, it has full furigana and is one of the easier manga I've read so far; just be prepared that it contains a bunch of "fantasy" words like attack names etc.)

Novels and Light Novels

ハイキュウ 小説版 (this was challenging at first because the author uses a quite rich vocabulary, the stories are not very complex though)

名探偵コナン (I’ve read several novel versions of the Detective Conan movies, the writing style is quite easy to understand, they cover various topics and they have full furigana, I strongly recommend them)

ハリー・ポッター 1 to 4 (the beginning was hard and sometimes I was a bit lost what happens but the overall difficulty is okay; there are also audiobooks on Audible)

変な家 (I really enjoyed this one, the first chapters are quite easy, only the last one was suddenly very difficult)

Games

Animal Crossing (easy and relaxing game, full furigana)

Ace Attorney (one of my favorites, no furigana, challenging at first but now at Ace Attorney 3 I can play it with only occasional look ups)

Even though I’ve read quite a number of books, I’m far from fluent. I'm currently reading several books: 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口, リング and ソードアート・オンライン 1. Even with all my experience, there are many new words in all of them. Maybe I should be better at this point, but it is what it is.

However, this is no reason to panic. I think that it’s important to not fear unknown words. New words are not a barrier, they help you grow. Instead of worrying about all these unknown words I take my time, look up words and follow the story. I can enjoy these books even though I don’t understand everything and need to look up many words.

To me, it’s about the journey, not the goal.

Some tips and strategies

Pick a book you’ve already liked reading in your native language (or after watching the movie). This way, you can be sure that you will like the story. This makes looking up many words more bearable. Plus, knowing the story makes it easier to understand the novel in your target language.

If possible, choose the ebook version. Reading digitally makes look ups faster and therefore less frustrating. Because it’s almost effortless you can look up many words without burning out. And by looking up more, there are more opportunities to learn new words.

Decide how many words you want to look up per page depending on your needs. Looking up words digitally is fast and almost effortless. This way it’s not hard to look up every word you don’t know. But if this is too much for your taste, just set a limit that makes reading more comfortable for you. You could try to look up only the 3 most important/interesting words per page and see how it goes. Change the number depending on how you feel or how difficult the book is.

It’s okay to not understand 100%. Progress is better than perfection. As long as you read regularly and look up at least some new words, your vocabulary will grow. Don’t worry too much about every single word you don’t know.

Being able to guess words from context is a valuable skill. Try to understand from context first and look up what seems necessary afterwards.

Don’t let yourself get discouraged right away just because you encounter several new words per page. If you start a new book, try to read at least the first chapter. The prologue and the first chapter are usually the hardest, because you need to get used to the authors writing style and the story.

Take as much time as you need. If you lack vocabulary, reading speed is nothing to worry about at this stage. Build up your vocabulary first.

Even if the overall level of difficulty is okay, there can always be paragraphs or chapters where your comprehension suddenly drops. That’s completely normal. Do your best to understand the gist, look up some words and then move on. Focus on the things you can understand.

You don’t need to learn everything the first time you read a book. Don’t worry too much about rare and specialized words, yet. Try to focus on more common words first. Since they come up more often and in different books, they are more useful at this point. Later when you are more advanced, looking up and learning these rather rare words is less overwhelming than in the beginning where everything is new.

エレンです。New to langblr.

i'm a 27 y/o digital artist and have they/them pronouns.

i honestly don't have a set goal in mind, it used to be "to move to japan" but i'm trying to be more realistic lmao

So happy my blog is helpful! (̂ ˃̥̥̥ ˑ̫ ˂̥̥̥ )̂ That means a lot.

I think that this post explains it best, but if that’s not helpful here’s my take. 

The onyomi is closer to the original Chinese language and is mostly used for nouns.

The kunyomi reading is used to show the traditional Japanese pronunciation. It is most frequently used when kanji appear in adjectives or verbs.

two or more kanji together is typically onyomi

kanji followed by hiragana is kunyomi

Tips: 

Read this article

Build up your verbal and listening comprehension. If you understand how words sound when you see them written you will understand the context which gives clues to the correct pronunciation. 

When in doubt use a dictionary with audio pronunciation of both onyomi and kunyomi for each kanji like this one

Realize that English has similar words such as read/read, minute/minute. How do you know which one to use when you speak or write? It’s not intuition. Similar to the rules for kanji, the position of the word dictates how it’s pronounced. I already read that. Read it now. I’ll be there in a minute. After all, it was so minute I forgot it was there. 

I hope that helps a bit. Anyone with any other advice please feel free to reblog with your take or tips.

with the fullness of time, i can admit i was wrong. "do the monk thing to my head" would be more like "頭を坊主した" or "頭を坊主ことした"