Furigana

> This entry makes use of Japanese characters and will require Japanese language support to be installed on your computer in order to avoid the characters being replaced by question marks, or blanked out.

Furigana (振り仮名) are kana characters (either hiragana or katakana) used as a reading aid in Japanese. Usually furigana, which are written in a small typeface, appear next to or below kanji to give the reader some idea as to their pronunciation. Usually this is used in children's books (since kanji might present difficulty for small children) or in case the kanji used are relatively obscure or nonstandard. A third use, which is not commonly seen, is the use of katakana furigana to give a kanji compound a reading in a borrowed language. For example, one might see 神様 (kami-sama, God) in written text with ゴッヅ (goddzu, pronounced like English "God").