Utente:Goroppon/Sandbox

Il furigana (振り仮名^?) è un sistema di scrittura ausiliario della lingua giapponese. Consiste in piccoli caratteri kana stampati vicino ai kanji o ad altri caratteri in modo da indicarne la pronuncia e facilitare la lettura. Nei testi orizzontali sono generalmente scritti sopra la linea del testo (in alcuni scritti invece si trovano subito sotto), mentre nei testi verticali sono stampati a destra della linea del testo, come illustrato qui sotto. I furigana sono quindi un esempio di caratteri ruby. Sono conosciuti anche col nome di yomigana (読み仮名^?).

漢 か ん 字 じ

or

かん じ 漢 字

Aspetto

I furigana possono essere aggiunti per carattere, e in quel caso la parte di una parola che corrisponde a un kanji è centrata esattamente sopra quel kanji; o per parola (o frase), e in quel caso l'intera parola scritta in furigana è centrata sopra molti caratteri, anche se i kanji non corrispondono correttamente ai kana che si trovano subito sopra. Il secondo metodo è più comune, soprattutto quando in giapponese si trovano parole con un'unica pronuncia (vedi ateji) che non hanno niente a che fare con nessuno dei caratteri con i quali le parole vengono scritte.

Quando è necessario distinguere le pronunce kun'yomi (訓読み^?, di origine giapponese) e on'yomi (音読み^?, di origine cinese) dei kanji, per esempio negli appositi dizionari di kanji, le pronunce giapponesi sono scritte in hiragana, e le pronunce cinesi in katakana. Comunque, questa distinzione è veramente importante solo nei dizionari e in materiali di studio. Nella prosa comune, il sillabario scelto per i furigana è quasi sempre l'hiragana. (L'unica eccezione generale riguarda i nomi propri cinesi — di persone, posti, anche cibi —, che vengono spesso scritti con i kanji accompagnati dalla pronuncia in katakana.)

Un tempo la differenza fra i kana normali e le forme più piccole, usate in certi casi per marcare particolarità ortografiche o fonetiche (vedi ad esempio il sokuon), non veniva resa nel furigana; quindi una parola come 却下 (kyakka, "rigetto") veniva scritta in hiragana come きゃっか, ma in furigana diventava きやつか. Questo era molto diffuso quando non c'erano i caratteri di stampa adeguati, ma ora, con i sistemi di stampa basati sul computer, si incontra molto meno frequentemente.

Usage

In questo cartello, i furigana indicano la pronuncia delle lettere latine "JR" e dei kanji per "Namba Station."

Furigana are most commonly used in works for children, who may not have sufficiently advanced reading skills to recognise the kanji, but can understand the word when written phonetically in hiragana. Because children learn hiragana before katakana, in books for very young children, there are hiragana furigana next to the katakana characters. It is common to use furigana on all kanji characters in works for young children. This is called sōrubi (総ルビ) in Japanese.

In works aimed at adult Japanese speakers, furigana may be used on a word written in uncommon kanji; in the mass media, they are generally used on words containing non-Jōyō kanji.

Furigana commonly appear alongside kanji names and their romanizations on signs for railway stations, even if the pronunciation of the kanji is commonly known. Furigana also appear often on maps to show the pronunciation of unusual place names.

For names

Japanese names are usually written in kanji. Because there are many possible readings for kanji names, including special name-only readings called nanori, furigana are often used to give the readings of names. On Japanese official forms, where the name is to be written, there is always an adjacent column for the name to be written in furigana. Usually katakana is preferred.

Furigana may also be used for foreign names written in kanji. Chinese and Korean names are the most common examples: Chinese names are usually pronounced with Japanese readings and the pronunciation written in hiragana, while Korean names are usually pronounced with Korean readings and the pronunciation written in katakana. Furigana may also be necessary in the rare case where names are transliterated into kanji from other languages (e.g., soccer star Ruy Ramos and activist Arudou Debito).

In language learning

Kanji and kanji compounds are often presented with furigana in Japanese language textbooks for non-native speakers.

Furigana are also often used in foreign language textbooks for Japanese learners to indicate pronunciation. The words are written in the original foreign script, such as Hangul for Korean, and furigana is used to indicate the pronunciation.

Punning and double meaning

Some writers use furigana to represent slang pronunciations, particularly those which would become hard to understand without the kanji to provide their meaning.

Another use is to write the kanji for something which had been previously referenced, but write furigana for "sore" (それ) or "are" (あれ), meaning "that", indicating that the characters simply refer to it with a pronoun, but clarifying for the reader what thing was meant.

In karaoke it is extremely common for furigana to be placed on the song lyrics. The song lyrics are often written in kanji pronounced quite differently from the furigana. The furigana version is used for pronunciation.

Also, because the kanji represent meaning while the furigana represent sound, one can combine the two to create puns or indicate meanings of foreign words. One might write the kanji for "blue", but use katakana to write the pronunciation of the English word "blue"; this may be done, for example, in Japanese subtitles on foreign films, where it can help associate the written Japanese with the sounds actually being spoken by the actors, or it may be used in a translation of a work of fiction to enable the translator to preserve the original sound of a proper name (such as "Firebolt" in the Harry Potter series) in furigana, while simultaneously indicating its meaning with kanji. A similar practice is used in native fiction to produce double meanings: for example, the word for "Earth" might be written with furigana for "homeland" (ふるさと) as the reading in a work of science fiction.

Other Japanese reading aids

Kunten

In the written style known as kanbun, which is the Japanese approximation of Classical Chinese, small marks called kunten are sometimes added as reading aids. Unlike furigana, which indicate pronunciation, kunten indicate Japanese grammatical structures absent from the kanbun, as well as showing how words should be reordered to fit Japanese sentence structure.

Furikanji

Furigana are sometimes also used to indicate meaning, rather than pronunciation. Over the foreign text smaller sized Japanese words, in kana or kanji, corresponding to the meaning of the foreign words, effectively translate it in place. While rare now, some late 19th - early 20th century authors used kanji as furigana for loanwords written in katakana. This usage is called furikanji (振り漢字) in Japanese, since furigana implies the use of kana.