Japanese's Guiding Language

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SOURCES & FURTHER READING

[NameExplain]

This is my first video of my slightly updated style! Basically the backgrounds are no longer pure white and I’ve drawn my character in more silly poses. Hope you enjoy!

[Werevampiwolf]

Kanji being pronounced in completely different ways depending on if it's by itself or within a word, and what word it's in is actually a minor plot point in Spirited Away: the character Chihiro is renamed "Sen" by magically removing all but one Kanji from her name when written down.
It's symbolic as well. Chihiro means "a thousand questions/fathoms" whereas Sen just means "one thousand", effectively reducing her to just a number

[theGypsyViking]

Radicals can help clue in on what a kanji means. For example, the kanji for "bright" 明 contains the radicals for "sun" and "moon, " because the sun and moon are both bright. Another example is the kanji for "rest" 休 containing the radicals for "person" and "tree." A person rests by a tree.

[coolbrotherf]

I've been studying Japanese for a while and this is a pretty decent summation on the writing system. As I learned more about it I learned how well it works for the language to clear up any miscommunication in writing. That it, assuming the reader knows how to read the kanji. Names of people and places written in Kanji though are a nightmare to deal with. Especially old cities can have names that are so old that they don't even match their kanji anymore as the pronunciation shifted over the years or were named something else without updating the kanji so people didn't have to redraw maps. Some peoples' names do that as well with newer names being represented with old Kanji that used to be used for a different name. No matter how good I've gotten at Japanese, I have a 90% chance of reading a name in kanji wrong or thinking it's some new kanji I haven't learned yet and looking for a dictionary entry that doesn't exist. Furigana with names is incrediblely helpful.

[cherie..cherry]

NO WAY i literally just was trying to search “Japanese words on top of kanji” this morning trying to figure this out.

[MarcoPoloGO]

Before Tokyo became the capital, Kyoto had been the capital for many centuries. Kyoto (京都) literally means Capital City. Then Tokyo became the capital (it used to be called Edo). Tokyo (東京) means Eastern Capital (To = east, Kyo = capital). Note that Tokyo is located to the east of Kyoto, so the name makes sense.

[daik]

Japanese here. This video looks so niche for me😅 but I want to add a trivia just for FYI😃
Furigana is also used in translated novels from other language to Japanese. For example if the original word in the English novel was blue devil, the Japanese translation would be 青い悪魔 (aoi akuma) but sometimes furigana such as ブルーデビル (buruu debiru) would be put on. It's one of the translation technique to let the readers know both the translated words and original words simultaneously.

[theskintexpat-themightygreegor]

This is kind of interesting. Whereas foreigners learning Japanese might consider Kanji to be the bane of their existence, I as a foreign, but HSK level 5, speaker of Mandarin Chinese prefer it. Take the Kanji for Tokyo for instance. It's 東京, which roughly (but accurately enough) translates as "East Capital". China also has a 北京 "North Capital", Beijing, the capital of China, and 南京, "South Capital", Nanjing, as in the Rape of Nanjing, It was a Chinese capital city. As for 西京, "West Capital", Xijing? Yeah, there was one. It's now called Xi'an (西安). I can't pronounce or understand spoken Japanese, but when they write in Kanji, I understand it just fine.

[tozainamboku]

I'm giving a special thanks just to hear you try to pronounce my name again! However, I shall give you a reading aid:
とう ざい なん ぼく
東 西 南 北

[Glockas]

Hanja isn't used as often these days, thus the reading aid in Hangul isn't either.

Funnily enough, the opposite happens sometimes. When multiple Sino-Korean words (Korean words of Chinese origin) have the same pronunciation, thus the same Hangul spelling, the Hanja character is sometimes placed next to it to avoid confusion.

Today, Hanja are mostly used in Legal documents, scholarly world, or in historical contexts, and usually only words with specialised or ambiguous meanings as annotation to the Hangul. They are used in decorative ways too in advertising.

And in North Korea, Hanja is flat out not used, after Kim Il Sung banned it.

[AthanasiosJapan]

Japanese is complicated, but furigana is helpful. Reading some Japanese books with furigana is the best way to learn Japanese. I mean that's actually how Japanese kids learn to read.

[yorgunsamuray]

When I was learning Japanese, there were only 1945 Joyo (common use) Kanji, they put some "name" Kanji into that list. Yes, there's a separate list of Kanji to be used in proper names. Place names have a lot of these and unorthodox readings, so this furigana thing is important to read station names. They even use furigana on TV.

[ShinyXK]

sometimes you can "sound out a kanji"
for example, 清精晴請情 all share a reading of せい and share the kanji 青, they don't necessarily carry the meaning of 青, but rather have it there as a way to show the reading.

[nootics]

Nice video. One thing I would have liked you mention probably is that furigana can also be repurposed in literature in creative ways. Simple example: in manga, when a character talks about someone else, perhaps the kanji of that someone else's name will be shown, but in the furigana, the hiragana *or even kanji* for "this guy" or "he" can be inserted to signify what the guy is *actually* saying in speech.

[BooksRebound]

う actually often doesnt make a U sound. When you see an O kana with a U after it (so OU together) the u basically just turn into a lengthening of the O sound. Thats why we dont say Toe-oo-kyo-oo.
Japanese is incredibly regular and logical, but there are a few irregularities and that う thing is one of them.

[moondust]

5:14 "ょ" is the small version of "よ", which is pronounced "yo". The difference between the smaller and larger versions is different from that of uppercase and lowercase characters in the English/Latin alphabet tho. The smaller versions of kana modify the pronunciation of the previous kana.
In this case, the kana before "ょ" here is "き", which is pronounced as "ki". If the regular "よ" was put after "き" to make "きよ", it would be pronounced as "kiyo" (ki-yo). However, because it's written as "きょ" instead, it's pronounced as a single syllable, "kyo".

8:51 While furigana on their own don't help explain what words mean, the kanji plus the furigana can help, at least once you know some basic kanji and their meanings, among other things, tho sometimes just the kanji is useful for figuring out the meaning.
In the case of Tokyo, "東" (pronounced as "ひがし" [higashi] on its own, but as "とう" [tou] in this case) means "east", while "京" (pronounced as "きょう" [kyou], among others) means "capital". So, all in all, Tokyo means "Eastern Capital". This not only makes sense from a Western perspective, given how far east Japan, and therefore Tokyo, is, but also because from the perspective of the former capital (Kyoto), Tokyo is in the eastern side of Japan.
Oddly enough tho, Kyoto (京都/きょうと) literally means "Capital Capital", or something along those lines, but the usual translation is "Capital City" lol

[someonestolemyname]

You missed that when written by an 8th grader(or someone of that mentality) or an isekai author, the furigana will be written in katakana above some 4 character phrase.

[mcdoublemaster]

There are also some cases where English words are written using Chinese characters based on their meaning with a furigana above written in katakana, Japanese is probably the most interesting writing system out there

[Shiromochimochi]

9:21
ルビ Rubi comes from the British printing term "ルビー Ruby".

The font size was close to 振り仮名 furigana.

[theweebrt]

よ makes "yo" sound...
For "yu" sound you shall use ゆ.