How to deal with known kanji's furigana?

Since it looks like the perfect place to ask, how do you deal with known kanji’s furigana?

I find my eyes still diverting to read the kanji’s furigana. It has gotten better after reading a couple books and continuing with my Kanji Kentei books, but I was wondering if anyone had a trick or some insight?.

It’s something it happens just on it’s own after certain learning progress?

Do you have any tricks/strategy for it?

If you are reading electronic books and are able to perform instant dictionary lookups with for example Yomichan, I would highly recommend disabling furigana altogether. If that’s not possible, I’d say it’s just something you’ll have to get used to over time.

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Is that an option in Kindle or Kobo?

I didn’t see that on Kindle (perhaps I missed it), and if it’s something Kobo has, I’d have to see about transferring the books there instead.

Sorry, I’m not sure; personally I read on my laptop with ッツ which does have that facility. I’m sure there will be someone else here who uses those reading devices and will be able to answer for you though.

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Oh that’s interesting software. Thanks for linking.

It doesn’t explicitly mention it anywhere, but I assume the files are processed locally in the browser so there’s no legal implications about “uploading” books as they are not stored on the server right?

I’m no programmer, but that’s my understanding, yes.

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With kids bunko books you can hold the book far away which makes it hard to read the furigana because it gets too small.

I used to do this with anime with English subtitles too. Sit far away so I couldn’t really read the subtitles anymore which made it easier just to listen.

Eventually you will be reading mostly books with very little furigana, so the problem will also correct itself.

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That made me spit my coffee out of laugh! It didn’t cross my mind to do that, but it’s quite a good strategy.

I guess with an ebook you can make the font smaller enough so only the kanji becomes readable, while with the physical books you would need to carefully find a position.

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If they are epubs, you can remove the furigana before loading them onto your reader, either by using this site: http://furiganalyse.itsupera.co or you can use the search & replace functionality with regex in calibre.
The calibre method should work with any DRM-free file. Though, you might have to check if the regex is the one used in your file:

  1. go to CONVERT from existing file format (eg. epub, azw3, pdf, etc)
  2. In the CONVERT menu there is a Search and Replace Option
  3. Add the following regex to the SEARCH bar: <ruby>(.?)<rt>.?</rt></ruby>
  4. Add the following regex in the REPLACE bar: \1
  5. Click the ADD button
  6. Continue with the file conversion

Edit: Okay, for some reason, it doesn’t show the regex stuff correctly. Guess, you’ll just have to google it. fixed. :slight_smile:

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Oh, that’s a very nice piece of software, maybe with that I can venture on harder books (due to my lack of Kanji ability still).

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I’ve just read so much stuff without any furigana that I just never look at it even when it’s there. That’s the easiest ways to get used to it. Aside from what the others have said, another option is to just train yourself to not look at them by placing the focus of your sight very deliberately. This will almost certainly tank your reading speed to begin with, though. Another solution that could theoretically work is to increase your reading speed to the point that the detour that reading furigana is to your eyes becomes too inconvenient. I have no idea if that actually works, though.

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This is pretty much where I’m at. If I end up reading a book with furigana I’ll try to enjoy it for as long as it lasts, haha. You’ll get to the point where it’ll be weirder to have furigana, no worries.

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Sometimes I just straight up cover them with something. Like if I’m reading a digital copy/pdf version, I’ll edit the pdf with a sticker or a shape over it.
Like how I’m currently reading Japanese Short Stories for Beginners: 20 Captivating Short Stories to Learn Japanese & Grow Your Vocabulary the Fun Way! as a means of review, but I find it frustrating that they put the English translation for the comprehension questions immediately below the question in Japanese. I was wondering why I was reading the questions so quickly until I realized that my eyes were drifting to the English :joy:. So I edited over them before I get to each chapter/section so that I can’t see it.

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If you buy your manga digitally, you can run it through Mokuro which lets you scroll over the text. I use it for easy yomichan look ups but it also gets rid of the furigana when you hover over the textboxes. Of course, you’d still see the furigana until you hover over the text but it could potentially be useful for you so I thought I’d mention it.

Here’s an example of what the text looks like normally and then when you hover over it:
image
image

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I read a lot of full-furigana novels. I just got used to it, I believe that subconsciously you start ignoring the furigana for words you know. For example, it starts to become easier to process 私 than わたし. This may take a long time though for less common words.

For hiding furigana, it’s probably a bad idea for LN and up. Often it’s used for effect and you’ll miss that. You can probably get away with hiding only hiragana though.

You should be remove it via regex in calibre, I haven’t tried though. At one point I was thinking of making a regex to remove all “simple” furigana like 見る, etc. Or if you like, an N4-N5 furigana remover :rofl:

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