Manga Japanese · Day 2 of 15
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Furigana
The reading printed above the kanji
Furigana is the reason manga is the best reading practice a beginner can get. It is the small kana printed alongside a kanji telling you how to read it, and where it appears you can read a word years before you can recognise the character. It also has one trap worth knowing about.
What it is and what it is called
Two names for the same thing, both worth knowing:
In vertical text furigana sits to the right of the character, and in horizontal text it sits above. That sounds trivial until you meet a page with both, and it explains why the columns of a manga page are spaced more widely than a novel's: the gap is there to hold the readings.
Who gets furigana
It is not a courtesy, it is aimed at a specific reader:
This is the single most useful buying rule in the course: check the demographic before the story. A seinen title you love will defeat you at N5, and a shōnen title you are lukewarm about will teach you to read. The furigana coverage, which you can see by flicking one page in a shop, matters more than the plot at this stage.
The furigana trap
What happens if you only read the small kana:
Furigana makes manga readable, and it also makes it possible to read a whole volume without learning a single character. The fix is small and deliberate: look at the kanji, try to read it, and use the furigana as the answer key rather than the text. Readers who do this pick up hundreds of characters passively; readers who do not can finish twenty volumes and still be unable to read a menu.
Carry over, from earlier days
Check yourself
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