10. Chinese Characters and Pronunciation

While most Chinese characters have only one pronunciation, some characters have more than one pronunciation. When we pronounce these characters, we usually decide the pronunciation based on the meaning of the word.

Listen to the example below. The character 樂 is pronounced differently in the two words below.

In some other cases, a character is pronounced differently because of tone change. Tone change refers to the situation when the tone of a syllable is changed to another tone in a particular word.

Listen to the example below. The character 鏡 is pronounced as geng3 individually, but as geng2 in the word 眼鏡 ngaan5⠢ geng2.

There is often tone change when we see two identical characters appearing consecutively in a word.

Listen to the examples below. Notice the tones of the characters 爸 and 麻 change in the words.

Different Chinese characters can share the same pronunciation.

Listen to the example below. All the underlined characters are pronounced as luk6.