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Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

As others have said, this is common in Chinese writing. The unique thing about furigana is that it's typeset above/beside the kanji for the second meaning.

Perhaps the more interesting thing is how even songs will often use kanji for a concept but the sung lyrics are expressed in furigana, but IIRC Chinese culture has this too.

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How is that common in Chinese writing? I haven't seen anything similar to gikun in Chinese. Outside of graded readers, I've not seen the pronunciation written above a character and in the case of graded readers, it would always be the expected pronunciation not a different pronunciation that carries a different sense. That's something I agree with the writer as being unique.

Writing the pronunciation above a character is normal when the character is rare or has an unexpected pronunciation. For example recently 龘 was often written with the pinyin above.

Writing a different pronunciation with a different sense is also often seen on WeChat or in adverts. Often with a positive meaning in characters and a negative meaning in pinyin.

Interesting, thanks. Any examples of adverts doing this? I'm curious!

It is not common at all, but in Taiwan there is bopomofo, which is used the same way as furigana in Japanese – to indicate the pronunciation of Chinese characters. In fact, children in Taiwanese schools learn bopomofo first and only later proceed with learning the traditional Chinese characters.

Bopomofo is not used outside Taiwan, though.

Yeah, most of my son's children books are from Taiwan (we're in Hong Kong so use traditional characters too) and I do see bopomofo sometimes. But it's mostly the normal use of furigana, doesn't seem to be used to give another alternate meaning/pronunciation to the word.

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