Writing Furigana With Markdown

There are millions of Japanese language learners such as me all over the world. Kanji (漢字) are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication. What a horrible number!

When we learn Japanese language, Furigana (振り仮名) is a great helper for us to know the pronunciation of Kanji.

However, how can we write Furigana with markdown language?

In fact, basic Markdown syntax does NOT support Furigana. We should use HTML to write it.

For example, we could write 日本語能力試験（にほんごのうりょくしけん） by the code below.

<ruby>日本語能力試験<rp>（</rp><rt>にほんごのうりょくしけん</rt><rp>）</rp></ruby>

Of course, we can split it to shorter words.

日本語(にほんご) 能力(のうりょく) 試験(しけん)

<ruby>
  日本語<rp>(</rp><rt>にほんご</rt><rp>)</rp>
  能力<rp>(</rp><rt>のうりょく</rt><rp>)</rp>
  試験<rp>(</rp><rt>しけん</rt><rp>)</rp>
</ruby>

Or:

日本語(にほんご) 能力(のうりょく) 試験(しけん)

<ruby>日本語<rp>(</rp><rt>にほんご</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby>
<ruby>能力<rp>(</rp><rt>のうりょく</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby>
<ruby>試験<rp>(</rp><rt>しけん</rt><rp>)</rp></ruby>

By the way, there are some unofficial Markdown extensions to support Furigana. They are efficient, but may not work on occasion.