乐 (lè): happy

Meanings

1 happy
2 cheerful
3 to laugh
4 to enjoy
5 joy; delight

Characters

乐

lè

happy; joyful

Examples

他是一个乐观的人。

Tā shì yí gè lèguān de rén.

He is an optimistic person.

助人为乐。

Zhù rén wéi lè.

Find joy in helping others.

孩子们乐得肚子都疼了。

Háizimen lè de dùzi dōu téng le.

The kids laughed until their bellies hurt.

Tips

mistakes

Five readings on paper, but only two are productive: 乐 (happy) and 乐 (music). Rule of thumb: emotion words take lè (快乐, 乐观); sound and instrument words take yuè (音乐, 乐器). The other three are rare: surnames Lè and Yuè (different families, same written form); lào appears only in northern place names like 乐亭; classical yào means 'to take pleasure in', as in Confucius's 知者乐水 ('the wise delight in water').

culture

助人为乐 ('find joy in helping others') is a core slogan of socialist civic morality, plastered on Chinese classroom walls and propaganda posters; kids learn it before they can write the characters.

Components

ideograph

乐 lè

happy; music (whole character)

Modern five-stroke silhouette with no transparent inner structure - treat as one fused shape. The traditional form 樂 pictured silk strings stretched across a wooden frame (a drum on a stand), and the 1956 simplification collapsed that whole instrument-and-rack into this stylized residue. Indexed under Kangxi #4 丿 by the opening sweep; the radical is not visibly meaningful here.

Filed under radical 丿 (piě, #4) by convention. 丿 is not a separate component in 乐, so no strokes are highlighted.