Verified answer

"Furigana" are sort of a Japanese reading aid. They usually put furigana over complicated kanji to help people read them and indicate it's pronunciation.

Furigana are the little letters (usually hiragana) that go over or next to a word. They tell the pronunciation. You'll see this a lot on business forms, because people have weird kanji in their names, and no one knows how to pronounce them. Or a town name may be absolutely bizarre, and people want to know how to pronounce it.

The problem in Japanese is that one "Chinese character" can have many, many different pronunciations. Like "nama" (raw) can be pronounced as "sei" or "ike" or "iki" or any number of ways.

Furigana is also useful for kids just learning kanji. That way, they can "read" kanji that is meant for older kids, and get familiar with it.

Hope that helps!

It is pronounced 'furigana'. It is a type of pronounciation aid to help you read Japanese Kanji. It is usually written in Hiragana next to the Kanji words. Hope that helps!

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