My stepsister is learning Japanese, and I'd like to write her a letter.
義妹は日本語を勉強します。だから、日本語で手紙を書きたいです。

I could write it out by hand, but honestly I like typing best. I figure I'd have to write really big if I'd like to include furigana next to it in order to help her learn. So, is there a word processor out there that will allow me to print furigana? If I have to, I can write out by hand, but would recommend some tips on how to fit it on paper.

Of course Japanese manufactured programs like Ichitaro can do it, but I assume you're not asking about that. Microsoft Word has good furigana support. Libreoffice has support but I haven't found it to work as well as Word. You can do it with HTML 5 also.

What about Microsoft Works? My Microsoft Office 365 ran out...

There used to be an extension for OpenOffice called Itadaki that would even add furigana automatically, and let you tune the process manually with an interface that made it a breeze.

Unfortunately, for some reason it completely disappeared long ago.

I wonder if any of the wizards that reside in this forum would be interested in resuscitating Itadaki.

Not exactly a word processor but Wakan can do furigana for you.

Uhm, OpenOffice is all you need XD
Select a word or a block of text containing kanji, go Format>Asian Phonetic Guide... It might require some tweaking to get it to look perfect.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but if you have to use furigana, may as well just write the word phonetically and forget the kanji. Until and unless you know the kanji, a kanji you don't know, glossed with furigana is simply a distraction from the reading process.

On the use of computers to write in Japanese, I prefer to do it by hand because that reinforces your knowledge of the kanji and kana. With a computer all you're doing is typing phonetically anyway.

john555 Wrote:Not to rain on anyone's parade, but if you have to use furigana, may as well just write the word phonetically and forget the kanji. Until and unless you know the kanji, a kanji you don't know, glossed with furigana is simply a distraction from the reading process.

With kanji, the reader can look up the words with no need to guess about homophones. Plus, knowing a kanji and knowing its reading (including rendaku) in every single word it can possibly be used in are not the same thing.

I used furigana from day four (days 1-3: learning the kana). It never felt like a distraction. Furigana is how I learned to know the kanji! (Also, RTK. But furigana bridged the gap between recognizing them and, eventually, being able to read them without furigana).

Spaced-hiragana and romaji always felt like eye cancer.

Yeah, furigana are a good help for beginners, and they're more authentic than all-kana writing (i.e. there's more kanji heavy furigana writing than all kana).

john555 Wrote:Not to rain on anyone's parade, but if you have to use furigana, may as well just write the word phonetically and forget the kanji. Until and unless you know the kanji, a kanji you don't know, glossed with furigana is simply a distraction from the reading process.

On the use of computers to write in Japanese, I prefer to do it by hand because that reinforces your knowledge of the kanji and kana. With a computer all you're doing is typing phonetically anyway.

Looks like somebody didn't understand the point of the letter.

comeauch Wrote:Uhm, OpenOffice is all you need XD
Select a word or a block of text containing kanji, go Format>Asian Phonetic Guide... It might require some tweaking to get it to look perfect.

Thanks, this seems to be working just fine.

One caveat is that in my experience OO's furigana is not compatible with other word processors; if you try to open that document in anything but OO it won't look right.