le4 = yue4?

[aafrophone]

I noticed (by accident) that I've been pronouncing music incorrectly in Mandarin, particularly the second character. But I looked it up in the online dictionary that I use, and I found two separate entries for the same character

http://tinyurl.com/5knfsf and http://tinyurl.com/66nqpk

Which is used more? Also, if I accidentally mixed them up would I still be understood?

[roddy]

lè for pleasure, enjoyment - 快乐， 乐观， yuè for music - 音乐， 奏乐。You can't mix them up, it's one or the other.

[YuehanHao]

To generalize the point, 乐 is not the only character that may be pronounced in more than one way, and/or have different meaning.

A few other examples are 还，得，一，教，尿，地, etc.

约翰好

[yolander]

the same by writing ,the different by pronunciation,chinese meaning is 多音字

[atitarev]

Thanks to 多音字, they a called "polyphones" or "homograph" and the phenomenon "polyphony" in English, romanisation tools are not perfect or require manual intervention (editing) or manual selection of the correct pronunciation.

In Chinese polyphony is a much less of a problem compared to Japanese, Arabic and Hebrew.

Of course, it exists in many other languages including English, e.g. "live" (verb: [liv], adjective: [laiv], row: [rou], [rau], bow: [bou], [bau], etc). Also think about wind, wound, dove, close, read, desert, lead, minute, polish, present, resume, sow and many other English homographs.

[ivyivy]

yes ,that is 多音字in chinese, as long as you remember le4means happy ,yue4 is about music,you will not be wrong

and such character are 行 hang2 银行means bank , xing2,means OK

单dan1 means "single", shan4 is a surname of a people

假jia3 means "fake", jia4 means "holiday"

etc

[889]

And no matter that 会计 looks for all the world that it should be pronounced huiji, it's actually kuaiji.

The number of characters with alternate pronunciations and tones is vast. You really need to keep a dictionary at hand, and consult it often: any good one will point you to the alternates.

[Lethe]

You remind me of a sentence

《孟子》：独乐乐，与人乐乐，孰乐？

At first it really baffled me...

du2 yue4 le4, yu3 ren2 yue4 le4, shu2 le4

playing alone, or playing with others, which one is happier?

This is an interesting example of the two pronunciation.

Edited August 8, 2008 at 02:02 PM by Lethe