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I'm interested on learning Japanese and I was curious on how this works. I
picked a japanese manga for curiosity and saw this on a balloom speech.

Why there is small words on the side of the big ones?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hjfyh.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hjfyh.png)
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2018-09-27T18:35:41.760
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question
meaning words furigana
Small Words on the side of Big Words. Is it a manga thing or a japanese thing?
The small writing is called
[_furigana_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furigana) in Japanese, and is also
known as [_ruby text_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character) in
English. These are provided as phonetic guides to show the pronunciations of
the bigger characters.

_Furigana_ are written out in [_kana_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana),
the phonetic Japanese [syllabaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary)
(a syllabary is like an alphabet, but each character represents a whole
syllable). There are two kinds of _kana_ :
[_hiragana_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana), used for most native
terms, and the individual characters tend to be rounder; and
[_katakana_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana), used for some native
terms and more for borrowed terms, and the individual characters tend to be
more angular. Imagine it as a little like `UPPER CASE` and `lower case` for
the Latin alphabet -- two sets of glyphs (characters), where each pair has the
same sound value.

The bigger blocky characters are called
[_kanji_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji). Kanji are complicated and take
time to learn, much like English spelling rules only more complex. A kanji
character can also have multiple possible pronunciations, depending on
context, which makes things even more complicated.

Since manga readers are often kids who haven't finished learning all the kanji
yet, manga publishers often provide _furigana_ so kids can still read the
text.
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answer