Pronunciations of 樂

[skylee]

I am very certain about the Cantonese pronunciations of this character (lok, ngok, ngao) but was not sure about its Putonghua pronunciations (of course I know there are le4 and yue4) because dictionaries seem to list only two. When I was studying Putonghua I asked our Beijinger teacher what the equivalent of the Cantonese "ngao" was in Putonghua and she said that there was no equivalent and it should be "le4".

So the mis-pronunciation of this character by Mr Yu Qiuyu (余秋雨) has really caught my attention. Frankly I think the press somehow really likes to pick on him for various reasons (probably because he is just 樹大招風). But I am glad that at last I know what that "equivalent" is, i.e. yao4.

樂山樂水

樂字有三個常用讀音，快樂(粵音落lok，陽入聲，普通話去聲le4)，音樂(粵音岳ngok，陽入聲，普通話去聲yue4)和仁者樂山的樂(粵音ngao，陽去聲，餚咬樂，普通話去聲yao4)。

余秋雨先生日前在公開場合將「仁者樂山」的樂讀成le4，自然有人提出異議。余先生解釋因為大部分讀者普通讀者不知yao4音，便讀了口語中大家熟悉的le4音。這樣未免體貼得過了頭，如果按這個思路，以後也不必集合語言學家、文字學家一起編字典，請「普通讀者」公決不就更省事？

而且更有趣的是余先生認為批評者是「整天翻著字典看別人有沒有讀錯音」的「字典派」，奇怪了，樂山樂水真有那麼冷僻？如果「仁者樂山」的樂讀成快樂的樂也不算錯，豈不是前代的老師都是「字典派」？余先生還進一步說「漢字簡化…還要簡化異體字和異讀字」，那更是文過飾非得過了頭。

[daxia]

沙发

[libertango]

haha, daxia... i just read that thread about 沙发

[Zhao Hanqing]

leshanle shui should be pronounced yaoshanyaoshui according to ancient phonetic system. But people prefer to pronounce it leshanleshui after putonghua and even dictionaries agree with this. You should pronounce it yao if you want to prove your learning. In Buddhist sutra reciting le is always pronounced yao. Anyway you can safely pronounce it le.

Another example an ancient tribe 大月支 is correctly pronounced darouzhi according to ancient sound. But it is pronounced dayuezhi in all my dictionaries.