<p>The real answer is, the pronunciations were always distinct. In OC, the root written as 樂 simultaneously represented a number of different inflected forms, among which are: [ŋrawk], [ŋrawk-s], [g-rawk] (Baxter), each with a different grammatical function. Due to a process that included many complex steps, some subsequent compounds ended up with the [ŋawk] ... [yào] form while others ended up with the [rawk] ... [lè] form.</p>

<p>Nowadays, many meanings are not always distinguishable and sometimes conflated, but as others have pointed out, in the literary readings of old texts where archaic readings are maintained (they are not arbitrary!), three distinct meanings can be identified:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The noun form that is part of today's compound 音[<strong>樂</strong>] (music), with the meaning of "concordance." Music is literally "sonic concordance."</p></li>
<li><p>The archaic, transitive verb form as in 獨[<strong>樂</strong>]樂，與人[<strong>樂</strong>]樂, with the meaning of "to concord with" or "to accord to."</p></li>
<li><p>The passive verb form that grammaticalized into today's verb "to be joyful" and its related substantive, with the original meaning of "to be in concord."</p></li>
</ol>

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2018-07-25T06:11:17.307Z
2018-07-25T06:21:09.317Z
2018-07-25T06:21:09.317Z
Nimrod
<p>I did some research. Here is what I found:</p>

<p>1) 樂 first meant music instruments, pronounced 'ngok'（逆角切）. In Japanese, it is がく［楽］(gaku).</p>

<p>2) The meaning happy '悦/樂' first had the same pronunciation 樂 as in 音樂. This was probably the case in 战国 (周朝)，because according to《爾雅·釋詁》(written after BC 476), 悦: 樂也。</p>

<p>3) In 唐韵 （written in 732 AD, 樂 meaning happy is pronounced 'lok' (盧各切). So the pronunciation changed between 周 and 唐, which is a long time (~1000 years). To cut the time shorter, we can look at Japanese, which borrowed a lot of Chinese characters between the 3rd - 5th century. In Japanese, ［楽］meaning happy is pronounced らく [raku]. So we know the 'lok' sound formed before 500 AD.</p>

<p>The timeframes map into the distinction between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Old Chinese 上古汉语 was used until the 3rd century and Middle Chinese 中古汉语 starts from the 3rd century. </p>

<p>Using this terminology, we can say this distinction is in Middle Chinese but not Old Chinese.</p>

<p>Furthermore, Old Chinese is considered to be very regular -- characters with the same component sound the same, and one character has only one pronunciation. </p>

<p>Now I guess the problem is solved. It seems that mathematical abstractions can help in reasoning and discovery! :)</p>

<p>PS. there could be a small difference in Old Chinese that led to larger difference in Middle Chinese. Old Chinese had double consonants. Later, double consonants are systematically dropped, and some words had consonant A and some with B. According to 韵典网 (ytenx.org/dciangx/dzih/%E6%A8%82)，樂's Old Chinese pronunciation was /ŋraːwɢs/, or transliterated as "ngrawgs". It had double consonants ŋ and r, so some words became ŋok, some became lok (r and l are the same), and some became ŋaw. The two meanings music and happy might had slight differences in Old Chinese.</p>

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2015-06-02T06:02:36.650Z
I would guess, most likely, the changed happened in Qin, when 秦始皇 unified Chinese characters and pronunciations from 7 states (书同文，语同音). Some dramatic pronunciation change was expected at that time.
Danke Xie
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2015-06-02T07:39:50.553Z
While I agree that it mist have happened before Japan adopted Chinese characters (both gaku and raku are listed as kan'on), the Japanese loaned hanzi slightly later, around the 4th or 5th century, slightly later than 248 CE, which gives a slightly larger timespan
sqrtbottle
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2015-06-02T09:09:40.827Z
Ancient Chinese is roughly separated as Old Chinese 上古汉语 (before 3rd century) and Middle Chinese 中古汉语 (after 3rd century). Using this terminology, this distinction is in Middle Chinese but not Old Chinese. Old Chinese is considered to be very regular -- characters with the same component sound the same, and one character has only one pronunciation.
Danke Xie
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2015-06-02T17:02:10.527Z
Overall a good answer, but a few corrections that would affect your timeline of events slightly: 唐韵 was written in 732 **AD**, not BC. Also, most Sino-Japanese vocabulary was borrowed was borrowed between the 5th and 9th centuries, not between 3rd and 5th. According to *The Languages of Japan* (Shibatani 1990): "a systematic introduction of the Chinese language occurred around A.D. 400, when Korean scholars brought Chinese books to Japan."
Claw
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2015-06-02T17:32:39.367Z
Is there some postulated (small) difference in Old Chinese that explains the (large) difference in Middle Chinese? An example of the sort of thing I'm looking for: http://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/3432/788
Stumpy Joe Pete
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2015-06-02T21:45:09.027Z
According to this: http://ccl.pku.edu.cn/chlib/articles/%E4%B9%90%E5%8F%98%E8%B0%83%E6%9E%84%E8%AF%8D%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E5%88%99%E8%80%83%E8%BE%A8.pdf, 《經典釋文》 (a book circa 582CE/Tang dynasty) says the reading of 乐  in "知之者不如好之者，好之者不如乐之者编辑" from the Analects is actually pronounced "le". So the reading of "le" is probably earlier than you're conjecturing.
Ringil
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2015-06-02T21:53:51.657Z
My conjecture is the Le sound occurred no later than A.D. 400. (Your book is A.D. 582). It should happen long before Tang dynasty. 

Actually, I think the new sound was introduced in Qin (circa 200 BC) due to Qinshihuang's unification of characters and pronunciations. However, there was no direct evidence. Rhyme book like this was from Tang Dynasty. Earlier evidence had to be traced to Japanese imports of the Kanji (circa 300 - 500 AD earliest).
Danke Xie
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2015-06-02T22:14:28.150Z
@Danke Xie - how do you explain the lack of a second reading in the Han Dynasty 说文解字?  I share Mr. Stumpy's curiosity in how this gigantic change in the language occurred in "only" 300 years, from the end of the Han Dynasty to Sui/Tang era
Master Sparkles
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2015-06-02T22:25:18.017Z
说文 was written in early 2nd century. I didn't check this book. If it is accurate, then the divergence happened after that -- between 200 AD. and 500 AD. In this period, what is called "Uprising of the Five Barbarians"  (五胡乱华) happened. After that, in 南北朝 (420 - 589 AD), people found old poems didn't rhyme very well. The language already changed dramatically. Because I wasn't sure what caused the change, either in Qin or 五胡乱华 period, I didn't put this in the main answer.
Danke Xie
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2015-06-02T22:36:56.357Z
well, that pins it down to sometime after 200 and before 500 CE, which isn't at all bad :)
Master Sparkles
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2015-06-03T08:12:08.757Z
@StumpyJoePete This is possible. There could be a small difference in Old Chinese that led to larger difference in Middle Chinese. Old Chinese had double consonants. Later, double consonants are systematically dropped, and some words had consonant A and some with B. According to 韵典网 (http://ytenx.org/dciangx/dzih/%E6%A8%82)，樂's Old Chinese pronunciation was /ŋraːwɢs/, or transliterated as "ngrawgs". It had double consonants ŋ and r, so some words became ŋok, some became lok (r and l are the same), and some became ŋaw. The two meanings music and happy might had slight differences in Old Chinese
Danke Xie
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2015-06-03T17:41:53.847Z
That sounds like a great piece of info to add to the answer!
Stumpy Joe Pete
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2018-07-25T05:28:26.843Z
悦 and 樂 absolutely did not have the same pronunciations in OC (or even MC). In fact 悦 the modern character as written came quite a bit later than 樂. Erya was a thesaurus, and did not imply a relation in the readings.
Nimrod
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2015-06-02T05:50:47.133Z
2015-06-04T08:23:50.183Z
2015-06-04T08:23:50.183Z
Danke Xie
<p>In the character 乐, it has two readings in Mandarin. In pinyin, yue4 and le4 (plus other readings I take are literary)</p>

<p>In other dialects too, there seem to be 2 distinct forms. In cantonese, lok and ngok. In Min Nan, lok and gak. Wiktionary actually lists 3 pronunciations for these dialects.
This is even reflected in Japan and Koreas' loaned pronunciations.</p>

<p>There are clearly 2 distinct readings of this character. My question is <strong>at which point did these pronunciations begin to become distinct</strong>? Due to the loan into Japanese and Korean, I take it could be quite some distance back in time, but the reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation has only one apparent form (albeit this may be a mistake).</p>

<p>Perhaps there is no clear answer, but the etymological history of when these readings diverged is my point of interest.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-06-01T20:56:01.993Z
maybe search for the character 樂 in early historical/philosophical texts and search the glosses for notes on how it should be read in different contexts.  For example by the Song Dynasty 《四書章句集》a comment on "知者樂水，仁者樂山；知者動，仁者靜；知者樂" notes that the first two instances are read ~yao4 (五教反), the last instance is read ~luo4 (洛-perhaps what turned into le4 in Mandarin).  However the Han Dynasty 說文解字 only admits 玉角切 ~ yue4.  Perhaps searching in pre-Tang standard histories and trying to find when commentators start noting differences in pronunciation?  Commentaries on 昭明文選 might be useful as well.
Master Sparkles
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2015-06-01T22:36:59.367Z
The Cantonese pronunciation corresponding to yue4 seems to be ngok6.
Yang
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2018-07-25T04:29:18.190Z
It should be pointed out that the OC reconstruction of the morpheme root 樂 is ŋrawk/ŋrawks depending on grammatical function (Baxter). Subsequent phonetic changes collapsed the polyconsonant initial to either ŋ- or r-. The ŋ- type later became "yao" while the r- type became "le".
Nimrod
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2018-07-25T05:21:25.070Z
Meanwhile, the different grammatical functions of the different pronunciations in the Analects quotation is evident: "知者樂水，仁者樂山；知者動，仁者靜；知者樂，仁者壽。" is rendered as, "Awareness concords with water, decency concords with mountains; awareness is active, decency is still; awareness is concordant, decency is enduring."
Nimrod
<etymology><history>
乐 Le and Yue: When did they diverge?
# 乐 Le and Yue: When did they diverge?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-06-01)

In the character 乐, it has two readings in Mandarin. In pinyin, yue4 and le4 (plus other readings I take are literary)

In other dialects too, there seem to be 2 distinct forms. In cantonese, lok and ngok. In Min Nan, lok and gak. Wiktionary actually lists 3 pronunciations for these dialects.
This is even reflected in Japan and Koreas' loaned pronunciations.

There are clearly 2 distinct readings of this character. My question is **at which point did these pronunciations begin to become distinct**? Due to the loan into Japanese and Korean, I take it could be quite some distance back in time, but the reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciation has only one apparent form (albeit this may be a mistake).

Perhaps there is no clear answer, but the etymological history of when these readings diverged is my point of interest.

**Tags:** etymology, history

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: maybe search for the character 樂 in early historical/philosophical texts and search the glosses for notes on how it should be read in different contexts.  For example by the Song Dynasty 《四書章句集》a comment on "知者樂水，仁者樂山；知者動，仁者靜；知者樂" notes that the first two instances are read ~yao4 (五教反), the last instance is read ~luo4 (洛-perhaps what turned into le4 in Mandarin).  However the Han Dynasty 說文解字 only admits 玉角切 ~ yue4.  Perhaps searching in pre-Tang standard histories and trying to find when commentators start noting differences in pronunciation?  Commentaries on 昭明文選 might be useful as well.  
> **username_2**: The Cantonese pronunciation corresponding to yue4 seems to be ngok6.  
> **username_3**: It should be pointed out that the OC reconstruction of the morpheme root 樂 is ŋrawk/ŋrawks depending on grammatical function (Baxter). Subsequent phonetic changes collapsed the polyconsonant initial to either ŋ- or r-. The ŋ- type later became "yao" while the r- type became "le".  
> **username_3**: Meanwhile, the different grammatical functions of the different pronunciations in the Analects quotation is evident: "知者樂水，仁者樂山；知者動，仁者靜；知者樂，仁者壽。" is rendered as, "Awareness concords with water, decency concords with mountains; awareness is active, decency is still; awareness is concordant, decency is enduring."  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2015-06-02. Score: 7 | Accepted answer

I did some research. Here is what I found:

1) 樂 first meant music instruments, pronounced 'ngok'（逆角切）. In Japanese, it is がく［楽］(gaku).

2) The meaning happy '悦/樂' first had the same pronunciation 樂 as in 音樂. This was probably the case in 战国 (周朝)，because according to《爾雅·釋詁》(written after BC 476), 悦: 樂也。

3) In 唐韵 （written in 732 AD, 樂 meaning happy is pronounced 'lok' (盧各切). So the pronunciation changed between 周 and 唐, which is a long time (~1000 years). To cut the time shorter, we can look at Japanese, which borrowed a lot of Chinese characters between the 3rd - 5th century. In Japanese, ［楽］meaning happy is pronounced らく [raku]. So we know the 'lok' sound formed before 500 AD.

The timeframes map into the distinction between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. Old Chinese 上古汉语 was used until the 3rd century and Middle Chinese 中古汉语 starts from the 3rd century.

Using this terminology, we can say this distinction is in Middle Chinese but not Old Chinese.

Furthermore, Old Chinese is considered to be very regular -- characters with the same component sound the same, and one character has only one pronunciation.

Now I guess the problem is solved. It seems that mathematical abstractions can help in reasoning and discovery! :)

PS. there could be a small difference in Old Chinese that led to larger difference in Middle Chinese. Old Chinese had double consonants. Later, double consonants are systematically dropped, and some words had consonant A and some with B. According to 韵典网 (ytenx.org/dciangx/dzih/%E6%A8%82)，樂's Old Chinese pronunciation was /ŋraːwɢs/, or transliterated as "ngrawgs". It had double consonants ŋ and r, so some words became ŋok, some became lok (r and l are the same), and some became ŋaw. The two meanings music and happy might had slight differences in Old Chinese.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: I would guess, most likely, the changed happened in Qin, when 秦始皇 unified Chinese characters and pronunciations from 7 states (书同文，语同音). Some dramatic pronunciation change was expected at that time.  
> **username_0**: While I agree that it mist have happened before Japan adopted Chinese characters (both gaku and raku are listed as kan'on), the Japanese loaned hanzi slightly later, around the 4th or 5th century, slightly later than 248 CE, which gives a slightly larger timespan  
> **username_4**: Ancient Chinese is roughly separated as Old Chinese 上古汉语 (before 3rd century) and Middle Chinese 中古汉语 (after 3rd century). Using this terminology, this distinction is in Middle Chinese but not Old Chinese. Old Chinese is considered to be very regular -- characters with the same component sound the same, and one character has only one pronunciation.  
> **username_5**: Overall a good answer, but a few corrections that would affect your timeline of events slightly: 唐韵 was written in 732 **AD**, not BC. Also, most Sino-Japanese vocabulary was borrowed was borrowed between the 5th and 9th centuries, not between 3rd and 5th. According to *The Languages of Japan* (Shibatani 1990): "a systematic introduction of the Chinese language occurred around A.D. 400, when Korean scholars brought Chinese books to Japan."  
> **username_6**: Is there some postulated (small) difference in Old Chinese that explains the (large) difference in Middle Chinese? An example of the sort of thing I'm looking for: http://chinese.stackexchange.com/a/3432/788  
> **username_7**: According to this: http://ccl.pku.edu.cn/chlib/articles/%E4%B9%90%E5%8F%98%E8%B0%83%E6%9E%84%E8%AF%8D%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E5%88%99%E8%80%83%E8%BE%A8.pdf, 《經典釋文》 (a book circa 582CE/Tang dynasty) says the reading of 乐  in "知之者不如好之者，好之者不如乐之者编辑" from the Analects is actually pronounced "le". So the reading of "le" is probably earlier than you're conjecturing.  
> **username_4**: My conjecture is the Le sound occurred no later than A.D. 400. (Your book is A.D. 582). It should happen long before Tang dynasty.   Actually, I think the new sound was introduced in Qin (circa 200 BC) due to Qinshihuang's unification of characters and pronunciations. However, there was no direct evidence. Rhyme book like this was from Tang Dynasty. Earlier evidence had to be traced to Japanese imports of the Kanji (circa 300 - 500 AD earliest).  
> **username_1**: @username_4 - how do you explain the lack of a second reading in the Han Dynasty 说文解字?  I share Mr. username_6's curiosity in how this gigantic change in the language occurred in "only" 300 years, from the end of the Han Dynasty to Sui/Tang era  
> **username_4**: 说文 was written in early 2nd century. I didn't check this book. If it is accurate, then the divergence happened after that -- between 200 AD. and 500 AD. In this period, what is called "Uprising of the Five Barbarians"  (五胡乱华) happened. After that, in 南北朝 (420 - 589 AD), people found old poems didn't rhyme very well. The language already changed dramatically. Because I wasn't sure what caused the change, either in Qin or 五胡乱华 period, I didn't put this in the main answer.  
> **username_1**: well, that pins it down to sometime after 200 and before 500 CE, which isn't at all bad :)  
> **username_4**: @username_6 This is possible. There could be a small difference in Old Chinese that led to larger difference in Middle Chinese. Old Chinese had double consonants. Later, double consonants are systematically dropped, and some words had consonant A and some with B. According to 韵典网 (http://ytenx.org/dciangx/dzih/%E6%A8%82)，樂's Old Chinese pronunciation was /ŋraːwɢs/, or transliterated as "ngrawgs". It had double consonants ŋ and r, so some words became ŋok, some became lok (r and l are the same), and some became ŋaw. The two meanings music and happy might had slight differences in Old Chinese  
> **username_6**: That sounds like a great piece of info to add to the answer!  
> **username_3**: 悦 and 樂 absolutely did not have the same pronunciations in OC (or even MC). In fact 悦 the modern character as written came quite a bit later than 樂. Erya was a thesaurus, and did not imply a relation in the readings.  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2018-07-25. Score: 2

The real answer is, the pronunciations were always distinct. In OC, the root written as 樂 simultaneously represented a number of different inflected forms, among which are: [ŋrawk], [ŋrawk-s], [g-rawk] (Baxter), each with a different grammatical function. Due to a process that included many complex steps, some subsequent compounds ended up with the [ŋawk] ... [yào] form while others ended up with the [rawk] ... [lè] form.

Nowadays, many meanings are not always distinguishable and sometimes conflated, but as others have pointed out, in the literary readings of old texts where archaic readings are maintained (they are not arbitrary!), three distinct meanings can be identified:

1. The noun form that is part of today's compound 音[**樂**] (music), with the meaning of "concordance." Music is literally "sonic concordance."
2. The archaic, transitive verb form as in 獨[**樂**]樂，與人[**樂**]樂, with the meaning of "to concord with" or "to accord to."
3. The passive verb form that grammaticalized into today's verb "to be joyful" and its related substantive, with the original meaning of "to be in concord."


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